Where your CAD structure mimics your org chart.
So, you are about to commence your design project.
The concept is well defined and the goal is clear, now begins the development process. Where to start?
Possibly it is resourcing, the logical place. You will need enough people with the right skills.
You, the Lead Designer (LD), will have designers and engineers assigned to you.
You divide them into teams to develop different sub-assemblies of the final product.
Each team will have a TEAM Lead (TL) managing a variety of disciplines to focus on the minutia of detail for each sub-assembly.
Like with any team, communication is key.
Information is passed from the LD who manages the product as a whole, through to the TL and down to the designers and engineers working on individual parts.
Clear interaction between the hierarchal levels ensures that everyone is moving in the same direction and the elements assemble cohesively back to form the final product.
And so, it is with CAD…
How do you, the DL, ensure that physically and aesthetically all the elements come together to provide a product solution that not only ticks all the boxes for fit, form and function, but is optimised for DFM (Design for Manufacture) and DFA (Design for Assembly).
This is where the Top-Down Design (TDD) methodology of CAD modelling comes to the fore.
The essence of what makes TDD so powerful for complex products, often comprised of large part-count sub-assemblies, is the management of geometry from the top level.
Reference control trickles down through sharing of geometry that control the makeup of the parts and their interactions between each other.
Look familiar. It is the same lines of communication that you have set up in your org chart.
This is also the reasons TDD works so well, regardless of the CAD package. Clear lines of communication of ideas represented by shared CAD references.
The TDD methodology.
The Lead designer (LD) has the high-level vision of how the product will work, the look, the feel and how the user will interact with it.
In CAD, we call this a Skeleton (CREO) or MasterModel (SolidWorks).
In this example, my weapon of choice is CREO so the terms used will reflect this.
The skeleton often starts with the outer shape of the product and core functional interactions. It may also have positions for user interactions like controls or screens etc.
The DL communicates this verbally and visually with his TL’s.
So too, does he/she share the CAD geometry of the overall skin of the product.
The shape is shared by publishing from the skeleton and importing this geometry into the lower sub-assemblies. Depending on their complexity, each sub-assembly may have its own Skeleton to control the parts and their interactions with each other within the sub-assembly. The process is repeated down the CAD hierarchal tree until it reaches the parts.
Part 2 coming soon - How the product design evolves in Comms and CAD – A case Study.
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