Dezignstuff Episodes Open For Business

The first thing I need to say is to those people who paid for introductory memberships, your membership is still good for the remainder of your year.

For the rest of you, you can get access to my new surfacing site for $50 a year. Here’s how:

1. Pay the subscription fee at https://episodes.dezignstuff.com/blog/
2. Fill out your registration info
3. Log in to the site
4. Start learning and having fun

This site has all of the information of a book (approximately 500 pages) for the price of a book, but with these advantages over a book:

• the info gets updated regularly
• the site expands with new data
• direct access to the author
• conversations with other members
• the site is totally searchable
• fully linked Table Of Contents
• download SolidWorks data directly
• videos throughout the site
• includes both theoretical information and practical examples
• tell-it-like-it-is conversational style
• you control the font
• in color
• no paper cuts

I’ve organized the site in 5 sections:

1. Concepts – surfacing as fabric metaphor, and other basic concepts you need to succeed in surfacing
2. Tools – What should you expect from each tool, and does it have any special functions?
3. Techniques – Common techniques for special situations (examples include master model, layout, a-bomb fillet, sketch tricks, etc.
4. Examples – 10 examples from emblems to sports cars showing the decision making process along the way
5. Best Practice – These are the best practice recommendations that I try to follow myself, and the circumstances under which they are valid.

I recommend that you read this book straight from the top to the bottom, but you might also just go straight to the examples. You could also just use the site search to use it as a reference for specific topics.

I’ve got a couple of favorite chapters. The Splines, Fillets, and Shelling chapters are loaded with new information I learned in the course of researching and editing the book. The aircraft model was a lot of fun to build. The chapter on Sweeps includes a fair bit of information that you probably didn’t know about Sweeps. Body Management is the biggest chapter, at over 25 pages.

The example models that I go through in detail in 10 chapters are:

1. Logo emblem
2. musical instrument
3. kitchen ladle
4. plastic bottle
5. motocross helmet
6. aircraft
7. sports car 1
8. sports car 2
9. decorative furniture
10. splitting a mold (not using SW Mold Tools)

Many other models were created to be used as examples for the rest of the site:

• BMX bike frame
• vase
• alarm clock
• rubber ducky
• furniture finial
• decorative wreath
• spring
• razor handle
• ice tray
• fluorescent light bulb
• many other abstract conceptual models…

For those familiar with my other stuff, this is an update to the 2008 Surfacing Bible, with all new material.

The intention is for this site to contain other topics – other Episodes – covering things like plastics design, administration, reverse engineering, and other things you can’t find learning materials for.

I look forward to talking to all of you about some of the topics in the site. It’s all written in that tell-it-like-it-is Matt Lombard style.