Crowd-driven design

matt_hardman

You start the design of a product and mark it as public, or share it in some way.
Anyone is able to modify the product, but since it's fully versioned, eventually we can home in on the best design.
This is crowd-driven design, the OS way (I think). The crowd can be limited to just your organisation, just those with editor privileges as set by you, or open to everybody.

In my organisation we use a design review process to critique design. It works well for the most part I suppose. With a couple of notable exceptions: design review notes are not kept with the 3D model, other people can't show you what they mean by simply editing your model, and CAD software is a bit clunky when it comes to presenting. We also use Project Data Management (PDM) software, so sharing designs like this aught to be easy, except it's not. OS uses branching to allow us to explore different ideas. This is so much better than anything i've used before.

So what happens if we want to compare those competing designs? They might be different branches in the same Part Studio, or they might have started life in totally different workspaces.
What else would make the experience of design collaboration easier?

matt_hardman

I often find that I want to compare designs by viewing them both in the context of the assembly. For me it would be great if I could be reviewing an assembly, and just switch a single Part from one design to another, to see how each would behave. I've not explored this in OS yet. This sort of side-by-side comparision is really rubbish in CATIA for sure

matt_hardman

What about recording design notes/comments with a model? You could tag them to the 3D model, or maybe have a wiki style "discussion" page

matt_hardman

Are you able to make a comparison of two branches of the tree in OS but not merge them. I suppose the merge feature can be used to that end anyway?

matt_hardman

What about presenting your ideas? I often find that it's easier to take a screenshot, add it to a slide in powerpoint and annotate it there. Why should that be so?
1. You ensure that everyone you send the slide to sees the information (or at least has to scroll past the slide)
2. You ensure that everyone get's the same view (cross-section, or with parts hidden, etc), or even just the orientation how you want them to see it
3. You don't have to send the entire dataset, just an image.

But what if there was a way to present your ideas and comments in a way that could also be used to present on screen to a group. Like a slide show that would transition the model between different scenes, with different comments and supporting images?

matt_hardman

Another process that I make use of, and I most commonly use this when the design is to interface with one or more existing designs: print out a Top, Front, & Right view of the space that my design will occupy, draw my ideas in 2D onto those drawings, come up with as many solutions as possible, boil down the good points, start 3D design.

Once you start 3D design an idea seems to more quickly become set in stone. Does anyone else find this? It might be because you've invested time and effort into generating that idea in CAD. I wonder if there's a digital alternative to this intial-ideas process. What do other people do?

Ben_

One thing I have found Matt is that the first tab is the one displayed when opening the model and that you can drag the tabs around to force one to be first. That way your " You ensure that everyone you send the slide to sees the information (or at least has to scroll past the slide)" is taken care of.