What is this "Design Intent" I keep hearing about?

Design Intent is not a buzz phrase like "ideation funnel" or "value streaming." It is a real term, with a real purpose. Ok, so those other buzz phrases are real too, but I'm just not talking about them at the moment.

Design intent could be better understood simply by reversing the order of the words. Does "intended design" make any more sense to you? Design intent comes into play when using parametric solid modeling programs, such as SolidWorks, ProENGINEER or Catia. As a refresher, "parametric" refers to a model that has features with a meaningful relationship to other model features or data. It is these meaningful relationships in the CAD world, these parametric relations, that make 3D modeling so powerful to us in the engineering realm.

Back in the days of 2D CAD (way back to the early 1990s), programs could not incorporate design intent into a model. It could display geometry of a design, but the model itself did not contain any information beyond the start and end points of a line, or the diameter of a circle to construct the model. In the mid and late 1990s 3D CAD powered onto the scene, allowing the model to become a virtual representation of a design. Associated data became contained within the confines of the model file, not simply the geometry required to construct the model. These other data covered information such as density, material, and the locations and sizes of features. This data could then be retrieved and modified at any time. When these modifications were changed, due to parametric relationships, the entire model would update itself. Of course as some of us have discovered, the extent and scope of these "automatically updating" features were highly dependent on design intent.

To build a robust parametric model (that is also easily editable), some design intent in the form of forethought on how the model is to be constructed must be given. After all, designs are conceived to fulfill a purpose. Take for example a strip of metal requiring a hole in the center of its width, much like a lawnmower blade. The design mandates a hole to be drilled in the center of the part's width and length. If you model the design by dimensioning a hole half the width from the edge, it is indeed "in the middle" of metal strip, but you have ignored the design intent of the hole. If the width changes in the future your hole would still be a half the original width away from the edge, and no longer in the middle of the part. Had you placed your hole in the mid-plane of the metal strip, no matter how the width changed the hole would remain in the middle of the strip. The design intent of the hole was maintained, and all it took was a little forethought during the modeling process.

This forethought does not stop at the part level however, as parametric relations are not confined internally to part models alone. Parametric relations can span between several models, along with their associated drawings, or be driven by the top level assembly itself. For this reason, design intent is very important and should be considered early on in the design phase of every project.

Pizza Shapes

I was sitting around and I started to think of pizza shapes. You really only have two choices, round and four-sided. The four-sided variety can be either square or rectangular. If you are to believe Pizza Hut marketing, everyone enjoys the crust, that's why they invented the square pizza. This way you can get more pieces with the crust. The down side is that you also get a couple pieces that don't have any crust at all. The round pizzas usually have 8, 12 or 16 slices, depending on the size. The downside with round pizzas is that sometimes the center can get really gooey. You try to eat this first, and burn the top of your mouth.

If you get some sort of dip with your pizza, like Papa John's, they stick this little container in one of the free corners of the box that holds your pizza. The dip sauce is great, but there usually isn't enough of it. This got me thinking of the perfect pizza shape. Imagine if you will a pizza that was round but missing its center? Imagine a flattened donut-shaped pizza!

The advantages of this are quit plentiful. The center is gone, its edges replaced with that crunchy crust. Everyone gets extra crust! Or if you cut it like a traditional pizza and make a circular cut between the two crust edges, you get twice the number of pieces. Some pizza conglomerate can market that as some calorie-watching gimmick. Also, everyone gets a crust! The really big advantage though, now that the center is gone, you will have a larger area into which a tub of some savory sauce or dipping goo can be place. You will never run out of dipping sauce, and you will save on packaging those smaller containers. Win-win for everyone.

Just remember that you read it here first!

I just thought of another advantage of the donut-shaped pizza! You will not need that little plastic table that they stick in the middle of the pizza to prevent the box lid from sticking to all that melted cheesy goodness at the center of a traditional pizza. Cost savings galore!

For All Our Technology...

It seems that for all of our techonology we are becoming less able to do things on our own. I'm talking the most basic of things as related to the typical office environment. For example, what is happening right now in my office. We have two rather expensive color copiers. These scan, fax, print, make capuchino, etc. I am witness to the downfall of man as I type this.

Person A (Bob) is talking with Person B (Stan). Stan really likes the information Bob has on a particular brochure and wants a copy. Bob agrees its good for Stan to have, so both walk over to the copier. Hm, copier seems to be on the fritz, they make their way to the other copier. It seems to be misbehaving this morning as well. The duo walk back to the first copier (closet to me). They try it again, I suppose in the hopes that the Copier Fairy had magically fixed the machine while they were on the other side of the room. Unfortunately, they forgot to leave the brochure under their collective pillows, for the machine is still not working.

Not to be done in by a simple copier though, Stan and Bob begin to troubleshoot the infernal machine. They proceed to fill ALL the paper trays. I suppose as an offering to the Copier Fairy. This doesn't seem to work, perhaps they should have offered a bloody chicken foot. A quick check of the internals of the machine doesn't seem to be helping either. They discuss the ill behaving copier at length, then make their way to the second copier. They must have had an epiphany or something, perhaps the Copier Fairy favors this second machine over the first? No. The second copier is just as out of commission as the first.

This wonderful floor show has been going on for a good 15 minutes now, with no sign of slowing down. I wonder how long it would have taken Stan to manually copy the critical information from Bob's brochure? Probably less time. Assuming this duo makes $90k a year, they wasted $21.64. That's lunch for 3 days! No worries though, I took considerably less time to write this.