Contest for Industrial Designers

I used to have a friend who was an industrial designer. But he retired and walked away from it all. So now all I have is you – a bunch of nameless, faceless folks on the internet.

When I wrote the SolidWorks Surfacing Bible, I got my friend to do some sketches for me, and in return, I gave him some modeling work or some engineering time or some CAD admin advice.

This was an image used in the SolidWorks Surfacing Bible. When I go back and look at that book, at the time it was the thing that I had done of which I was most proud. But now it looks pretty simplistic, especially compared to some of the models in the new SolidWorks Surfacing Episode site, which has more mature or sophisticated examples, models that took more time and are more developed, as well as stuff that is less theoretical and more like some of the real items you might actually model in the course of doing work.

And that’s why I’m coming to you today. I’d like to get some real sketches from industrial designers, and to get permission to use them on my new site. In return, I’ll give you free access to the site. It’s like giving away a free book. I’d like to use a couple of ID images in the development of a new chapter based on engineers interpreting ID input. I have a fair bit of experience doing this kind of work, I just need some new (and non-proprietary) material to work from.

The sketches don’t have to be super elaborate, just something I can reasonably model from, and use as an example for engineers and designers who are trying to learn or improve some skills. It would be great if your sketch had the hint of some geometrical subtleties, or maybe a little ambiguity about shape. If you have seen my training materials, you know I like to address problems that might come up – there is no perfect workflow.

The goal of the chapter I write based on your sketch is to help prepare engineers and mechanical designers to be able to interpret 2D data into 3D data while trying to understand and value the intent of the original design.

I’m looking for sketches of handheld devices, real or imagined, consumer products, industrial, medical, military or sci-fi. Something with a hand grip, or potentially interesting stuff to model. I’d like to avoid copyright entanglements, so nothing that is recognizable or the property of someone else, and might get me on the wrong side of, say, Disney, or your employer, for example. I went to Instagram to find stuff, but didn’t get any response when I asked for permission to use material. It might be old school, but I’ll only use stuff with permission.

And yes, you can make multiple submissions. I’ll be the final judge, although I may get some help from other engineers. We might have multiple winners, depending of course on the entries.

Part of what you get out of this is exposure and camaraderie with other ID folks, in a back-to-basics sketching sort of way. Plus, ID folks and engineers really need to build bridges to help share product design ideas and realities of manufacturing costs and other requirements from throughout the product development organization. Also, the Episodes site free membership is worth $50 annually (but I’ll give the winner(s) a 5 year subscription). It has examples of modeling, with a walk-through of the decision making process on models for 11 chapters. There are also chapters on the features, evaluations tools and techniques, as well as a lot of practical stuff that you won’t find on Youtube or the SW Help or anywhere else.

To submit sketches, you can put items in the comments for this blog article, or you can email me directly. If you have questions, please ask them as a comment so that everybody can benefit from the answer.

So stop writing that report or whatever other silliness you’re doing, and dig out that pencil tray. Maybe take a little time at lunch and get back to some of the basics most of us enjoy so much, and scratch out a couple of ideas. Thanks so much!