White Paper: Enjoy Flexible Product Design with ZW3D

Enjoy Flexible Product Design with ZW3D ZW3D CAD/CAM White Paper


April, 2014


Overview User experience (UX) has always been a major talking point, with visual impact a crucial part. People prefer products with eye-catching shapes, while designers are facing more design challenges than ever, requiring faster sketching, flexible modeling, and high quality surfaces etc. If you are facing any design challenges or would like to know more about product design, then this white paper deserves your time to read.

Figure1: The process of product design

The whole product design process involves many factors such as drafting, modeling, rendering, as well as a lot of other techniques and, of course, designer’s creativity. Each element of the design process must combine with each other. Typically, most product designs start from sketches and end up with solid models.

Figure2: Product design

From following inquiry research of 100 designers, we find that the most important parts in design process include sketching, surface quality and flexible modeling.

Concept Design

Detail Design

Prototype Test Document Manufature Production

Sketching 3D Models Assembly Rendering


Figure3: The design factors inquiry research

Each element of the design process and the designer inquiry research will be covered by this ZW3D white paper.

Easy to use 11%

Flexibility of modeling

12%

Sketching 12%

3D Wireframe 11%

Solid/Surface modeling

11%

Assembly design

11%

Surface quality 12%

Easy to modify

11%

Documentation 9%


Table of Contents 1. Easy to Use .................................................................................................................. 6 2. Flexibility ....................................................................................................................... 6

2.1. Sketching Flexibility ........................................................................................... 6 2.2. Modeling Flexibility ............................................................................................ 7 2.3. Editing Flexibility .............................................................................................. 10 2.4. Documentation Flexibility ................................................................................ 10 2.5. Assembly Modeling ........................................................................................... 9 2.6. High-Quality Surface ....................................................................................... 10

3. Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 11


Index of Images Figure1: The process of product design ....................................................................... 2 Figure2: Product design ............................................................................................... 2 Figure3: The design factors inquiry research ............................................................... 3 Figure4: The process of designing glasses.................................................................. 6 Figure5: Sketching with ZW3D ..................................................................................... 7 Figure6: The hybrid modeling processes ..................................................................... 7 Figure7: Setting different parameter to get different parts ........................................... 8 Figure8: Morph curve to curve to create a special surface .......................................... 8 Figure9: Wrap geometry to the button face.................................................................. 9 Figure10: Partial modification of external models ...................................................... 10 Figure11: Flexible assembly design ........................................................................... 10 Figure12: Create a continuous surface with a continuous curve ................................. 9


1. Easy to Use

Product design used to be a purely professional activity, as the tools were difficult to learn and use. Nowadays, however, the ribbon interface and quick help system shorten the learning curve greatly. With simple operations, great designs can be finished easily, as shown in figure 4. (Furthermore, the parametric technology helps to modify and update the product design immediately)

Figure4: The process of designing glasses

2. Flexibility Flexibility is the most important issue affecting the design process. If we conduct a deeper analysis, we find that flexibility involves sketching flexibility, modeling flexibility, editing flexibility, documentation flexibility.

2.1. Sketching Flexibility The flexibility of sketching allows for both easier creation and modification of models in ZW3D. Take the following figure 5 as an example. Using the built-in sketching library, it is easy to create standard sketches. Furthermore, it is easy to generate different kinds of sketches in seconds using the equation curve. Adjustment can be made with a simply drag and drop operation.


Figure5: Sketching with ZW3D

2.2. Modeling Flexibility The flexibility of modeling tools is hugely important, which can influence the creativity of designers. The principles of solid modeling and surface modeling are very different. Previously, designers were required to distinguish between different modeling commands. ZW3D’s unique Solid-Surface Hybrid Modeling technology, however, eliminates this barrier between solid modeling and surface modeling. It delivers much more user-friendly experience and more flexibility in creating 3D models, since the Boolean operation works for both solid and surface geometries, as shown in the following figure.

Figure6: The hybrid modeling processes

Except for general modeling, serial designs of products and deformation designs are also very important for designers. Part configuration allows designers to build parts variations conveniently through adjusting parameters and managing features. What’s more, by taking advantage of the flexibility of the Morphing, Wrapping and Flex Tools, simply with one button, new style products can be generated. 1) Part configuration

In one part, by suppressing the features and setting different feature sizes, several different part statuses can be generated quickly. In an assembly, any configuration of this part can be called directly. It is a very efficient method of undertaking serial product design.

http://www.zwsoft.com/ZW3D/knowledge-base/white-paper/Future_Trends_of_3D_CAD_Modeling.html


Figure7: Configure different features and parameters to get different parts

2) Morphing

The transformation of parts used to be difficult, requiring designers to create surfaces. Instead, with the Morphing capability, shapes can be adjusted and accepted once the visual impact achieves the required result.

Figure8: Morph curve to curve to create a desired shape

3) Flex Tools

No matter if you would like to design rings, bottles or shoes, the FlexTools allows you to map the shape and create the transformation as desired


Figure9: Wrap a shape to a target face

2.3. High-Quality Surface Generally, in order to build products with the best surfaces, continuous curves and surfaces are essential, as shown in figure 12. Surfaces can be generated from curves, and continuous curves allow you to generate a continuous surface. Furthermore, the curvature tools help improve the quality of the curve or surface during the operation。

Figure12: Create a continuous surface with a continuous curve

2.4. Assembly Modeling Any product is composed of many different parts.ZW3D supports not only Bottom-up assembly design but also Top-down assembly deign. Flexible assembly design can meet different needs of designers. Both the design of independent part and the update of associative parts can be done easily in ZW3D.


Figure11: Flexible assembly design

2.5. Editing Flexibility During product design, the structure of the product must be continually modified in order to coordinate the assembly and production. Occasionally, partial modification of external models is required. With parametric modeling and Direct Edit tools, designers can perform the adjustment of models easily and quickly in every stage of product designing. Meanwhile, we can use the feature frozen function to freeze some features which do not need to be changed. This can prevent unexpected model change, avoid model regeneration failure and reduce the history regeneration time, thereby improving efficiency.

Figure10: Partial modification of external models


2.6. Documentation Flexibility The flexibility of the documentation is indispensible for design collaboration. Both 2D and 3D documentation are considered in ZW3D; 2D documentation can be achieved with only 2D drafting, while the 3D PDF shows the model in 3D in a simple PDF document without the need for further 3D software.

3. Conclusion Apart from what we covered above, there is much more that can be explored in ZW3D. No matter what you design, the flexibility of ZW3D allows you to save time and money, while the simple user interface will speed up the process and allow you to focus on more creative work.

White Paper: Enjoy Flexible Product Design with ZW3D

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