Design Overview

Design is about to represent your ideas and creative thinking in physical way. Means your are giving the shape and size of your ideas from your mind to the real world. Design needs lot of research, technical ability and creative thinking. Only those designers who have personal qualities of a sufficiently high order can take up the work of a new design.

The designs, depending upon the methods used, may be classified as follows

(1)Rational design-This type of design depends upon mathematical formula of principle of mechanics.

(2)Empirical design- This type of design depends upon empirical formula based on the practice and past experience.

(3)Industrial design- This type of design depends upon the production aspects to manufacture any machine component in the industry.

(4)Optimum design- It is the best design for the given objective function under the specified constraints. It may be achieved by minimizing the undesirable effects.

(5)System design- It is the design of any complex mechanical system like a motor car.

(6)Element design- It is the design of any element of the mechanical system like piston, crankshaft, connecting rod, etc.

(7)Computer Aided Design- This type of design depends upon the use of computer systems to assist in the creation, modification, analysis and optimization of a design.

So everyone in this chapter we will deal with CAD (Computer Aided Design).

Computer Aided Design is the technology concern with the integrated design activities using a digital computer. this include computer and modification of graphic image on a video display, analysis of design data,electronic storage and retrieval of design information and printing these designs as hard copy on a plotter or printer. 

Today in the era of rapid technological changes, product innovation, greater response to customer requirement, CAD gives an innovative and efficient system for design.

Advantages of CAD over traditional method of design

• Computer Aided Design (CAD) is faster and give more accurate result than conventional method.
• Developing the design of component and associated drafting is a very easy task with CAD.
• Manipulation of various dimensions, attributes and distance of drawing element, is very easy. this makes CAD the most useful design tool.
• By using CAD it is not necessary to redraw any design or part of it, for further usage. A component once designed can be copied anywhere for further references.
• Various geometric properties including dimensions of various components, their tolerance with each other can be checked accurately, without making their models and prototypes.
• By specifying the material used and the atmospheric working condition for the component which has to be designed its behaviour can be analysed by using CAD.
• Kinematic feature of CAD packages enables the designer to visualize the operational performance of the component.
• Several profession CAD packages also have 3D visualization capabilities, this helps the designer to see their product from different orientation.
• Drawing are stored in a systematic manner, which allow their easy and fast retrieval.

Thus use of  a CAD system provides better engineering drawing, more standardization of drawing, better documentation. fewer design errors and greater legibility.

Concept of PLM (Product Lifecycle Management):- PLM stands for Product Lifecycle Management. PLM cycle starts from our imagination or idea to final finished product. PLM integrates people, data, processes and business systems and provides a product information backbone for companies and their extended enterprise. Means human being integrates our ideas and imagination to the computer where some data shows the how does it actual look like. After that it comes under some process to extract its errors and fix it before going to end user. Design is the very important step of Product Lifecycle Management you can say CAD is the birthplace of PLM. CAD step give some shape and size of our idea and enable it to analyze, process and manufacturing.

1. Idea- PLM starts from ideas that used to come in human mind. It is the very first step towards the PLM chart. Means if you intended to do something or want to make something different, it is very important to build some ideas in your mind.

1. 2. CAD (Computer Aided Design)- CAD stands for Computer Aided Design. Means Design or giving a specific shape and size of our ideas and thoughts through computer and CAD softwares. There are a lot of CAD softwares are available in the market.
    following CAD softwares are quite famous for modelling and Analysis:-

• Unigraphics CAD
• AutoCAD
• SolidWorks
• Catia
• Pro-Engineering

3. CAE (Computer Aided Engineering)- After the giving shape and size of your idea as like a product through CAD software. Now you have to analyze it, whether it  is safe & reliable or Not! To analyze it, we would have to engage our product with CAE software.

     Following are the CAE softwares:-

• Hyperwork
• Ansys
• LS-Dyna
• CFD
• Nastran
• And many more softwares are available in the market to analyze multitasking problems.

4. CAM (Computer Aided Manufacturing):- After Assuring that our design is safe and reliably. Then we need to manufacture them with the help of CAM technology. This is advance technology where one simple command can manufacture any thing what ever you want.

Following CAM software are quite famous in the market.

• UG CAM
• DEL CAM
• CATIA CAM
• PRO-E CAM
• And many more CAM softwares are available in the market.

5. Trail- After completing the process of manufacturing of the product, now the time come to examine it, that is called TRAIL. in this step of PLM we attempt so many trail of the product to ensure that our product is safe and reliable in real world. If we found any error into the product then we redesign the product and revise all the steps again from starting point.


6. Launch- After clearing all the stage of PLM , now the time come to LAUNCH it. This is the last stage of product life cycle Management.

Free Hand Sketching-
Sketching is the geometric representation of your thoughts and ideas which have specific size and shape.

Sketching is the very first steps towards Design and develop the products that your are thinking about. For example if you want to design a car that you are imagining in your mind, so you have create a sketch of it in a blank paper. and after that prepare its in 3D or 2D model in CAD software. Means your are giving specific shape and size of your imagination into a blank paper by sketching and converting this sketch to 3D or 2D model in software platform.

If you go to the Automobile industry, here they used to prepare firstly a rough sketch of their new car on paper and after that forward this sketch to the designers. Designers analyze that sketch and prepare their paper sketch on CAD software and make their 3D model to review the design that how it look like?

Sketching a car in a simple paper is not over the sketcher section but sketching its every part and component also come at this section, Means if want to make any thing in CAD software you have to prepare firstly their sketch on paper.

let us take a simple part sketch other than car body sketch. which is being designed for massive machine.

Another example of sketching is to make the sketch of house or building that are planning to make a home. firstly we prepare a map of our house and a architect produce a sketch of the house and make their 3D visual. So that we can see premade house image.

Hope all of you understood very well that how importance sketching is required to design the things.