IMAGINiT Industrial Design Solutions Blog

Sketchy Situation

imaginitfeeds@rand.com (Shad Hardy) — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 23:16:00 EDT

Industrial Designers love to draw. Why? Because it's the quickest way to show our design intent, the form, the look and feel of a product and it is just plain old fun. AliasStudio has some really great functionality that will get you sketching faster than if you were using marker and paper (without the intoxicating smell of Xylene). Let's talk really quickly about set up. First, you have to have a Wacom tablet of some kind. The newest ones are great with the little buttons on the upper corners. They are grey in color. The best, if you can afford it is the Cintiq display. Second, you need at a minimum Autodesk's DesignStudio to sketch. Here's the secret to sketching really fast that has less to do with a 3D modeling like interface... after getting into sketch mode (Ctrl+2) and selecting a pencil, marker or eraser you hold down the SPACE bar. Voila, a quick, hockey puck like interface that will give you everything you need to adjust your color, brushes and a bunch of layer filters you can use really, really fast.

A Report From the Field IDSA Kansas City, MO

imaginitfeeds@rand.com (Shad Hardy) — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 16:00:25 EDT

Sold out a week ahead of time! That's the story. The Industrial Designers Society of America's Midwest Regional event is huge. There are a lot of designers here willing to hear from the trend setters of design. It's the face of the new IDSA. They're doing great. It's a well-organized, fun and informative event with big name presenters including yours truly.

"...We are really trying to show Industrial Designers they have the power to lead the development of a product through technology"

IMAGINiT Technologies Industrial Design Road Show Brings You Something Amazing at the IDSA Regional Events!

imaginitfeeds@rand.com (Shad Hardy) — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 15:59:25 EDT

The IMAGINiT Industrial Design team will be spending their April weekends in the cities of Kansas City, Columbus and Portland playing a large role the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) regional events. Be prepared to see things that your parents don't know about, things so amazing that you won't believe them with your own eyes. I'm talking about Industrial Designers and Engineers working together in unison. I'm talking about technology working for the good of two disparate teams. Please be aware that this will be a unique opportunity to witness how technology can blur the lines of responsibility on how a product can be made more efficiently, accurately and be delivered sooner to market.

Our diverse technical staff made up of one Industrial Designer and one Engineer will show an entire workflow using AliasStudio, Inventor and Showcase. They will be showing how a product can be developed from the ground up in an environment that will in fact blur the lines of who's who.

Here are the events we will be attending;

http://www.idsa.org/events.htm

IDSA Northwest District Conference
April 4-6
Kansas City, MO

IDSA Mideast District Conference
April 11-13
Columbus, OH

IDSA Western District Conference
April 25-27
Portland, OR

Leverage Digital Design or Else!

imaginitfeeds@rand.com (Shad Hardy) — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 10:58:10 EDT

Let's talk about Industrial Design and what role the computer can play in it. Computers are wonderful number crunchers that give life to things; like helping us look up people's phone numbers and play our vast mp3 collections. Basically, it's an automation machine that we couldn't live without. No stranger to the computer, our friend the Engineer brings new, safer and higher quality stuff to our lives using a computer's power in a shorter time than ever realized in the past. So how do creative people leverage a computer to make us more productive?

I am the first to admit that I love the feel of paper, fat Berol pencils and the intoxicating smell of zylene markers. As we've all lost a few brain cells to late nite sessions with markers, a computer would be the perfect scapegoat for the industry to show us the way to the hardware. Not the case. We are the technology early adopters for a different reason; usually the draw is the object's aesthetic value (think iPhone). Let's get past that and use that big ugly workstation sitting on your desk for a larger goal than impressing the guy next to you with that chrome covered device you've imported from Japan.

We all are being asked to be more productive. To do this we all have to have a scalable workflow. How about having a digital sketch you can print at any size? How about using that sketch over and over and over... to email, to print, to undo, etc? What if you could model right over the sketch to control your design intent to exactly what you want it? Digital media is portable and can be used for multiple reasons. Get a tablet to sketch on and you've got a great team with AliasStudio. You no longer have to work in the 2d world and hand off a $3 bill that nobody believes. Using the power of data you already have combined with your design talents is a workflow we all should aspire to achieve. It's fast, accurate and you minimize your hand waiving and poor verbal explanations to your client. You have the data that you can now present on your laptop with a nice projector. It's also interactive. Paper is a one shot deal. It's great for many things but to get the project done you have to use the advanced digital tools you have at hand.

AliasStudio 2009 - Can't Wait!

imaginitfeeds@rand.com (Shad Hardy) — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 13:16:40 EST

Autodesk has done it again. The new AliasStudio 2009 product is going to be awesome. Continuing on the same level of intense development, Autodesk's Alias team has done us a lot of favors (favours if you are Canadian) with how AliasStudio functions. You will have to wait for another month or so to get your hands on the new stuff but keep learning what you've got. This way you will be ready for the new functionality.

Let's talk about sketching for a moment. You can do away with printing through your old, multi-step way and just print your pretty canvas sketches right from the print window. Nice. What about user prefs? How about a unique way of saving them out so it's not so confusing? Done! How about a new paintbrush? Done! What about a better way of mixing colors so you don't have to be a rocket scientist to get a dark red turn pink? Done! They've even made it easier to work with the layer editor so you can manage your layers better amongst other hidden gems.

Modeling is a larger beast to tackle. With whirlwind of changes made in V13 and 2008, users were happy with the ease one could make high quality surfaces, but wait there's more. There are now more options to align, ways of organizing your CAD data and cool enhancements made to using keypoint curves and primitive curves. Our favorite secondary surfacing tools are more powerful now. You will be able to use them more often for quickly finishing complicated draft areas and blended surfaces. Let's not forget the suite of reverse engineering tools in the Surface Studio and AutoStudio versions. They have new features making the AliasStudio package a one-stop shop for all of your prototyping needs.

Now that I've let some of the cat out of the bag, will IMAGINiT's ID team be able to keep up? You know it. We will continue to be knowledge leaders in the new ways of working with the entire Alias product set.