Sketch Or SketchUp; Where Do Your Ideas Start?
Sketch of "Yagi antenna decoupling saddle" by Mjolnir
An interesting post just crossed my screen that I think our designer/tinkerer (and/or designer-tinkerer) readers would probably be able to shed more light on than me.
Dr. James Self wrote at Core77 about his doctoral research into the different processes industrial designers use to move from concept to object. When is a sketch appropriate and when does someone use a computer in the very early stages of conceptualizing?
Basically, it varies.
Findings indicate that sketching continues to underpin design activity. Professional experience also influences the use of sketching in support of design activity. Less experienced design students tend to lack confidence in their sketch ability and they find the dynamic, unconstrained medium at odds with an approach to design activity that errs towards fixation and attachment to concept.
As part of my research I visited practicing designers at their places of work and interviewed them about their use of design tools. Interestingly, the designers often juxtaposed the affordance of sketching against the limitations of 3D CAD tools. Like many in design education, practitioners stressed the explorative, divergent affordance of sketching over the more constrained convergent nature of CAD. Of course they understood the value of CAD, but spoke of a concern for the ways it may limit student creativity, ‘a student’s design being too influenced by the constraints of this or that software.’
There is more in the piece regarding the timeline for introducing design tools to students. I’m curious, though: how do MakerBot operators use design tools? Many of our operators are not designers at all, and perhaps not so great with drawing. Turns out, they’re not alone; neither are many of our in-house designers.
I just popped by our design studio to find out how our team works, and it seems the answer is: everybody’s different. Some of them sketch everything before diving into any CAD work, while Michael Curry, our Design Superstar, does the “sketching” in his head, because, simply, he sucks at drawing. When he does draw, it’s to test a mechanical idea, to run a structural experiment in 2D.
So what about you? Do you sketch before you SketchUp? Is the idea of drawing something a little too free-form for you, or conversely is CAD too complex to the point of inhibiting an idea?
I’d love to know your process. If you’ve got something to say, perhaps there’s room for your advice on this very blog. So chime in!
| Tagged with | cad, design, industrial design, sketching, skimbal | 8 comments |
8 Comments so far
AKron
In an odd twist to this I was trying to figure out a CAD drawing with one of our mechanical engineers, today and he ended up drawing a sketch to illustrate how he interpreted the CAD drawing. Where I work it’s not unusual to put ideas on a whiteboard first before committing them to CAD.
PrettySmallThings
A lot of work I do uses photographic research, and in that case, sketching isn’t necessary. When I’m creating an idea from scratch, I do quite a bit of sketching and doodling. For me, drawing is a way to think and communicate – it’s not about artistry.
I had a professor once who told me you have 1000 bad drawings to get out of your system before you can expect a good one. So you’d better get started. Drawing is a skill that can be learned, just like anything else.
Sketching that walks the line between drawing and drafting is the most useful to me. Sometimes people who have a tough time “drawing” really excel at exploring an idea isometrically or othrographically on paper. I explore an idea in a loose way on paper first, and often come up with better ideas in the process. Then, I tackle those ideas from a technical perspective, detailing out the complicated bits. As I head to the computer, I try not to be too attached to the first sketches, because it’s really easy to draw yourself into a corner. A sketch is just a place to start.
Renee
I find that drawing is a good way of clearing up some mental images that I have for what I’m working on. When I put them to paper usually obvious problems like objects intersecting the same space or things of that nature become apparent.
Once those sketches are done I use Illustrator to further the design. Illustrator is great in that it’s not very complicated, it’s inviting and you can specify measurements and lines snap to other objects very well. It’s great for quickly getting symmetrical designs in place.
erikjdurwoodii
I pretty much always start from a sketch. A lot of nuance that will later become important structural or design traits can be quickly tested and evaluated in a sketch.
Even the structure of the line-work and shading is like a little visual language that makes the CAD process much more … deliberate. Especially in parametric modeling software. For me, the final CAD model is not usually identical to the sketch. Tolerances, fabrication considerations, even design decisions and improvements take place along the way but that’s just part of the process.
R. Maker began as a single sketch I made during lunch.
http://www.thingiverse.com/image:73870
The following afternoon it was modeled in Autodesk Inventor and rendered in 3d Studio Max.
http://www.thingiverse.com/image:73632
Not really the same design but obviously one inspired the other.
emmett
Most of my design work I do in my head. I don’t like the limitation of 2D sketching when I’m thinking about a 3D part, since my imagination works in 3D already. However, I definitely sketch on paper or a whiteboard if I’m working with someone on a design, because it’s hard to beat as a communication medium.
The main time I use sketches is for parametrizing models, which is especially important when working with OpenSCAD and with the kinds of mathematical models I like. These sketches are where I can draw out the appropriate triangles and solve for the required lengths and angles to make the geometry come out right. They don’t tend to be things of beauty; they usually look more like free-body diagrams.
Ricardo
The reason why “everything goes” is partly the amazing flexibility of the creative mind but also the lack of design knowledge and methods and poor teaching practice. There is no single best way but often designers are victims of their habits, skills or uninformed choices. Very intetesting post, thank you.
g.wygonik
Pretty much everything I model is sketched first. However, I suck at perspective drawing so all of my sketches resemble old-school, 4-view 3D modelling software: front, top, and side views; I let the software handle perspective since it’s good at that. Even though most of my sketches are done on my iPad, I’ve never exported the sketch and pulled it into software for tracing since my drawing are never to scale, nor in any way dimensionally useful; they’re inspiration more than technical.
I agree with others that sketching first can help clear up issues or just better refine a design faster than creating model first; sometimes the amount of effort to get a model created, only to realize that it doesn’t work, can pose a blocker to wanting to iterate again.
Ann Marie Shillito
Thank you for this article and the comments flowing from it. The reason I am intrested is that as a researcher at Edinburgh College of Art (1999 – 2006) we were looking at why designers sketch and the limitations that CAD poses for the early germinal stages of designing. My focus was on why many designer makers are alienated by CAD and it is the issue of prescriptiveness which carries through from most CAD packages being engineering led.
The functionality required by engineers and product designers is not conducive for the ‘quick and dirty’ iterations required to fluidly explore the ’1000′ ideas so crucial at this germinal stage. Our research led to the development of 3D sketch/modelling software which replaces the 2D mouse with a 3D haptic (virtual touch) device to provide a 3D digital workspace for the fluid construction and manipulation of 3D forms. For designers this is a good tool for early stage ‘doodling’ and for designer makers a non-complex interface that is not intimidating.