Archives for "Engineering"
Design in the cloud?
A new article in Design News looks at the state of design collaboration, specifically the steps being taken by design tool vendors to move design collaboration into the cloud (that place, according to the article, “where the Web is employed to deliver on-demand access to a shared pool of computing resources, be it servers, storage, applications or services”).
Full disclosure: The article does mention Arena customer Mobius Photonics and Arena bill of materials (BOM) management software, which has always been offered in the cloud. But the bigger question examined is whether there are cloudy skies ahead for CAD and CAE tools. The article acknowledges the traditional reasons for skepticism about that possibility, including availability of the bandwidth and CPUs needed to deliver “the performance and interactivity required for data-intensive, graphically demanding CAD and CAE applications.” It concludes, however, that cloud-based solutions will at least have a place in the design tool mix of the future.
Particularly interesting is a brief discussion of some of the ways Autodesk is leveraging the cloud to offer new solutions. Read the full article to learn more.
P.S. Not surprisingly, the cloud is a topic that’s near & dear to our hearts. Feel free to check out some of our previous posts on the subject:
Cloudy…with a chance of clearing
Dear SolidWorks, Welcome to the cloud
Dispatch from SolidWorks World: Solid clouds?
You can also learn more about the advantages of on-demand software-as-a-service (SaaS) (i.e. cloud-based) solutions on our website.
The SawStop: Product design with a purpose
If you’ve never seen the SawStop table saw in action, it’s worth watching this video for the sheer engineering vision it took to pull this off…. This is magical product design that changes lives.
P.S. The story of SawStop is another one for the build-it-yourself annals — the inventor of the technology originally planned to license the SawStop feature to other table saw manufacturers, but when he was unable to reach agreements with any of them, he decided to take matters into his own (five-fingered!) hands and design, develop and manufacture a cabinet saw that had all the features and precision he’d ever wanted.
The old ways are sometimes best (or at least really cool)
Most umbrellas today are cheap – literally and figuratively. They turn inside out at the slightest of winds. They are given away to advertise everything from tequila to the World Wildlife Fund. The handles are molded plastic, the spokes are pliable pot metal and the mechanisms seem to stick more often than not. They seem to come in one of two types – the giant golf umbrella or the tiny push-button umbrella – and the mechanisms that drive the raising and lowering of the canopy are familiar, yet unremarkable.
In contrast, please let me introduce you to an old-fashioned umbrella mechanism with style and superior utility. The umbrella in question was produced in 1957, by a company called PJK, and the mechanism patented. The umbrella line is called “Touch and Go.” It looks like this:
Beautiful, isn’t it? And strong. This umbrella has never turned inside out in my experience, and it has been used in blustery New England weather. The spokes are thick, with a rectangular cross-section, and oriented such that the bending moment to flip the umbrella inside out acts through the long axis of the rectangle.
The true genius of this mechanism though, is the tensioning system. Rather than employ a spring inside the umbrella shaft, this umbrella uses the spokes themselves to generate tension. Look again at the detail picture. The spokes are aligned in pairs and when force is exerted on the tip of the umbrella, the pairs are compressed, bowing the two sides out to form the lovely petal shape you see in the photo. That petal shape is a pair of loaded leaf springs. The spring tension is then captured by a trigger-style mechanism at the loaded point.
The umbrella closure is the most impressive part of the mechanism operation. Upon hitting the button, the leaf springs are released, resulting in lightning-fast contraction of the canopy. The canopy snaps back so quickly that a majority of the water is left behind. The canopy is left damp but not dripping.
I found this umbrella in a thrift store 20 years ago – the handle you see here I machined myself, when the old one finally cracked. This umbrella is a product both hardy and beautiful enough to be worthy of reworking, enabling true “green” behavior – repairing rather than throwing away for a cheaper new version.
This old-fashioned mechanism is almost certainly more difficult and more costly to manufacture than the mechanism that has become the norm. But in this case, what we have given up in our quest for a cheaper utilitarian product is both beauty and superiority of function.
Dispatch from SolidWorks World: James Cameron, engineering manager?
James Cameron
You may think of James Cameron as a hopeless romantic or a sci-fi nerd, but an engineering manager? At this morning’s keynote presentation at SolidWorks World, that’s just how he fancied himself.
When you think about it, he’s delivered some truly amazing products over the years. In addition to the movies, he’s also very involved in space exploration (working with NASA), deep sea expeditions (he’s going to the bottom of the 7-mile deep Mariana Trench in a submersible he helped design and test) and cutting-edge high-tech imaging products. An engineer at heart, he credits part of his success to his approach to managing engineers. He believes that, in order to be successful, you’ve got to sit down with the designers and take the time to understand the design of the product.
(Interesting. All too often, interactions with engineering involve expediting and yelling. “Design faster, Jeff! Are you done yet? Are you done yet? How about now?”)
Finally, Cameron shared his approach to starting every project. He gathers his core team and reinforces these three tenets:
- Hope is not a strategy
- Luck is not a factor
- Fear is not an option
Sounds like good advice, and he’s got the accolades to prove it.
Dispatch from SolidWorks World: Solid Clouds?
At the main stage session on the first day of SolidWorks World 2010 we got a sneak preview of “CAD in the cloud.”
What? You can’t do that!!! CAD will NEVER work on anything but desktop computers. Right?
Apparently, Dassault’s vision is expanding from “professional designers” to all “professionals.” Interesting vision–and an interesting demo. We got a real-time view of what it would look like to view a 3D model–in real time–with a browser.
SolidWorks, welcome to the cloud.
Looking forward to Day 2’s keynote speaker: that guy who sunk Titanic.
Until then…
Dangerous Homemade Technology
In the fall of 2009, my good friend Tim Taylor and a squad of like-minded insane people decided to build a race car. This race car, to be precise:
The car was built to compete in the 24 hours of LeMons race, an endurance circuit race for cars costing less than $500. The full story of the car design and fabrication is beautifully chronicled in a MotoIQ article by Dave Coleman.
Fabrication basically involved buying and dismantling a wrecked 1971 Honda Z600, a wrecked RX-7 GSL-SE and a Honda Magna VF1100C motorcycle, selling off all the unwanted parts and salvaging the remainder. Many custom parts were fabricated from raw materials and the team did a whole lot of welding. The end result was a 1400 lb., 116 hp race car dubbed the Angry Hamster, built from less than $500 net of parts. It took the team 3 months of blood, sweat and tears, for a wild 24 hours of racing. A good portion of that 24 hours was spent in the pits, working on the car. Although they placed 140th (not in the top half), the team won the coveted “Dangerous Homemade Technology” award, in recognition of the incredible engineering horsepower brought to bear on what could be classified as a ridiculous idea: combining these three vehicles and making the beast rear wheel drive.
The unflagging dedication of Tim and the team to the engineering process is inspiring. Read the MotoIQ article. This is love of design (and insane hard work) personified. Now, like many an ambitious project, the fabrication phase lasted right up until the race day, so the race really was the prototype test. Who knew that the 6mm gear box bolts would shear? Or that the starter bolts would back out, causing the starter to exit the vehicle? Or that the shift selector would fail? Lessons learned! (Keep in mind those first two were successfully fixed on the fly. It was the third that ended the Hamster’s race.)
I can’t wait to see Angry Hamster Racing in 2010 with a few more of the kinks worked out. Of course, knowing Tim, he may just build a whole new car—for him the building is almost as much fun as the end result.
Subscribe to the Arena Blog
Follow us on Twitter
Like us on Facebook
Read the Arena Dispatches