In an ever evolving discipline of design and engineering, CAD has become an indispensable tool. CAD enables designers to create precise, complex, and easily modifiable digital models.
However, amidst the technological advancements of the last two decades, the value of hand sketching remains significant. Combining CAD modelling with hand sketching creates a powerful synergy that enhances creativity, communication, and problem-solving. Let’s explore how these two approaches complement each other and failing to embrace both leave a design from reaching its full potential.
Evolving a style of working on your design can reap the rewards from the strength in both.
The Unique Strengths of Hand Sketching
Hand sketching has been a fundamental part of design for centuries, and its relevance endures today. Here are some of the unique strengths it offers:
Unrestricted Creativity: Sketching on paper provides the freedom to explore ideas without the constraints of software tools or commands and sometimes CAD ability. It encourages quick experimentation and fosters creativity, allowing designers to capture fleeting thoughts and unrefined concepts. As children, doodling, scribbling and scrawling is an early form of expression and communication. Most of us could do it at one point.
Simplicity and Speed: A pen or pencil and a sheet of paper are all it takes to bring an idea to life. Sketching is faster for initial brainstorming compared to opening a CAD program, setting up parameters, and navigating menus and icons.
Expressiveness: Hand sketches often convey emotion and intention through the designer's strokes. This human touch can make it easier to communicate a vision, especially in the early stages of a project.
Low Barrier to Entry: Unlike CAD software that can come at considerable cost, but also requires specific skills and training, sketching is an intuitive process accessible to almost anyone. Kids know this without even knowing it. This makes it an excellent tool for collaborative discussions.
Problem-Solving Tool: When tackling design challenges, sketching can help visualise ideas, identify potential issues, and iterate rapidly without the distractions of software precision.
Sketching - Concept Visualisation in a flash.
The limits of Hand Sketching
The limits of sketching can be seen in terms of size, scale or dimension. Or interaction between mating parts. How to reach into the page behind that front wall to see the interaction with other internal parts behind. A cross section can be useful to focus on an interaction between parts, there clearance and/or fits but may lose a sense of the overall form that the outside sketch portrayed.
The Power of CAD Modelling
CAD has revolutionised the way designers and engineers work. It offers unparalleled precision and capabilities that were once unimaginable.
Here are its key strengths:
Accuracy and Detail: CAD allows designers to create highly detailed and dimensionally accurate models, which are crucial for manufacturing and construction processes.
Modifiability: Digital designs can be easily edited and iterated upon, making it simple to explore variations or make corrections.
Visualisation: Advanced CAD programs provide tools for rendering, simulation, and analysis, enabling designers to visualise how a product or structure will look and perform in real-world conditions.
Collaboration: CAD files can be shared digitally, allowing teams across different locations to collaborate seamlessly.
Integration with Manufacturing: CAD often integrates, often seamlessly, with manufacturing processes, such as 3D printing or CNC machining and tool making, streamlining production workflows.
The Limits of CAD Modelling
The down side of CAD as a design tool can be the investment, not just financial, but time required to set up a model to ensure you get the most out of it whilst still remaining flexible and open to new ideas. Sometimes a positive improvement can be passed on due to the effort to flex or change the model. Have a look at my blog - The CAD Modellers Dilemma - Fast and Loose or Structured and Robust.
CAD is perfect...... It is perfectly right or perfectly wrong. The art is discerning which is which and what side of that line is your current model? But this is where prototyping and testing the reality of your design is an essential part of the product evolution process, but more on that another time.
Bridging the Gap for Industrial Designers: Hand Sketching and CAD Modelling Together
While CAD and sketching excel in different areas, their combined use creates a more holistic design process. Here are ways they complement each other:
Ideation and Concept Development: The initial stages of design are often exploratory. Hand sketching allows for rapid ideation, helping designers to flesh out rough ideas. Once a concept gains clarity, CAD can refine it into a precise and detailed model. This transition ensures that creativity is not stifled by technical constraints early on.
Enhanced Communication: During collaborative discussions, hand sketches can quickly convey ideas to team members, clients, or stakeholders. These sketches, whether on paper or a white board, can then be translated into CAD models for a more polished presentation.
Iterative Design: Designers can start with sketches to brainstorm, then use CAD to test and refine those ideas. If issues arise in the CAD model, returning to sketches for problem-solving keeps the process flexible and dynamic.
Physical and Digital Integration: Many projects involve both physical prototypes and digital models. Hand sketching can bridge the gap between these realms, helping to conceptualise physical forms before committing to digital precision.
Creative Exploration: CAD tools, while powerful, can sometimes impose a rigid workflow. Sketching provides a break from this structure, encouraging designers to think outside the box before re-engaging with digital tools.
Tips for Combining Hand Sketching and CAD Modelling
To leverage the strengths of both approaches, consider the following tips:
Start with Sketches: Begin every project with rough hand sketches. Focus on capturing the essence of the idea without worrying about details or accuracy.
Use Sketching as a Feedback Tool: When reviewing CAD models, use sketches to annotate and suggest changes. This approach is particularly effective in collaborative environments. Print a view of your CAD model and then work over the design with pen making refinements for form and fit.
Digitise Your Sketches: Scan or photograph hand sketches and import them into CAD software as reference layers. This technique ensures continuity between the sketching and modelling phases.
Practice Both Skills: Regularly practice hand sketching and CAD modelling to maintain proficiency in both. Consider sketching exercises to improve creativity and speed, while also learning advanced CAD features to expand your technical capabilities.
Incorporate Hybrid Tools: Tools like digital tablets and styluses allow for sketching directly into CAD or digital design apps. These tools combine the intuitive feel of hand sketching with the precision of digital modelling.
Collaborate Across Mediums: Encourage team members to contribute both sketches and CAD models during design discussions. This approach ensures diverse perspectives and fosters creative problem-solving.
The Future of Design for Industrial Designers: Balancing Tradition and Technology
For many years CAD software developers have known the integral connection for designers between sketching and modelling and continue to develop their apps that bring the gap.
As technology continues to advance, the design process will evolve further. AI, virtual reality, and generative design are already shaping how designers work.
We now even see digital products that market themselves as ‘feels like drawing on paper”.
Despite these advances, the fundamental principles of creativity and communication remain.
Hand sketching, with its timeless simplicity, and CAD modelling, with its accuracy and sophistication, are not opposing forces. Instead, they are complementary tools that together empower designers to innovate and solve complex problems. By embracing both, designers can maintain a balance between the artistic and the technical, ensuring that the human touch remains at the heart of design.
Next to my mouse pad is a red, blue and black pen and a wad of A4 paper full of notes and scribbles.
Or if I am out and about the wonderful BIC 4 colour is the bomb.
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équipe design & consulting , with over -0-20 years experience in design and manufacture of Medical grade moulded parts and product, including 5 years at the coal face as Operations Manager at a world class medical grade moulding facility; we are specialist in Design for Manufacture (DFM).
Please reach out if you feel you need assistance with your part design for plastic injection moulding, from Design Coaching and Guidance to Full Service Design Consulting.
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