How do I DO what I do?

I was recently asked, "How do you Do what you do?" Huh? It took a moment for me to grok that question. Was I being asked about my workflow? Was I being asked to train others? Did someone think I was crazy or crazy-like-a-fox? As it turned out, the correct answer was "all of the above." I rambled through some explanation that satisfied my inquisitor, and the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I needed to write something down for my own sake. You get the benefit of reading about here.

When I am faced with a design challenge the first thing I try to do is understand what the design scope is. For example, a customer might comment about a panel being flimsy.

1. They could be saying the panel is too flexible and are worried about drum-skinning.
2. They could be saying that it won't hold up in the user environment and want it more robust.
3. They could be saying that it just looks too cheap and are worried about user perceptions.

All three examples are covered by the "flimsy" comment above, and all three require different approaches in the design. Pick the wrong direction to precede and at a minimum you look like someone that doesn't know what they are doing. In the worst case, you or your employer just lost a customer. Design is a very subjective field, and the sooner a designer knows what the customer truly desires, the sooner a designer can create an item that will satisfy that customer. Of course there is a fine line between what the customer wants and what they need, but I'll save that for another topic. Ask questions, and make sure there are no Yes or No answers. Get your customer to paint a full picture for you.

When I am called to discuss a design I sit back, listen, and take notes. Usually there are others in the room that have spent a great deal on time on a project already, let them talk. They know their product or manufacturing capabilities, and combining the two can only yield one design outcome that they can see. These existing personnel are too close to the design, so close in fact they are married to it and can't see where improvements can be made. This is all right in the short term, at least they are showing some compassion for their work. Its hard to come into a situation like this, as I may be unfamiliar with the industry or the unique challenges that are encountered. The best thing to do is listen to all the arguments being presented, draw on my past experiences, and formulate something that tries to address all the issues. I'm there to provide a new perspective on the problem, collectively being known as "thinking outside the box" and "ideation". Sometimes a successful design might require suggesting a manufacturing method that is not common in the customer's industry. Sometimes I have to literally "turn the world on its ear" and suggest a different assembly process that gets the design back to familiar and manageable territory. You can't get faulted for paying attention and listening, just be sure you stay focused on the task and are ready to provide solutions when its your turn to speak up.

When I am developing the design, I am considering the entire system. How will my widget interface with other items? How will manufacturing produce it? How assembly build it? How will end users interact with it? As I develop my models in SolidWorks, I try to envision what the final assembly will look like. This will lead me to where the assembly origin should be, and in turn tells me which components are the critical driving factors for the design. This also gives me further insight into how each part should be modeled, as in when a part should be a revolved feature or multiple extruded bosses. From the base sketch, should I extrude in only one direction in the plane, or should it be a mid-plane extrude. The proper model construction should be intuitive at higher levels of the model. It should make sense that if I want to grow a particular feature that I should only have to select that feature and modify it, not find myself in a cascading chain of changes.