{"id":7,"date":"2013-05-14T09:04:43","date_gmt":"2013-05-14T10:04:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/123designs.biz\/blog\/?p=7"},"modified":"2014-12-13T18:14:45","modified_gmt":"2014-12-13T19:14:45","slug":"how-to-design","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/123designs.biz\/blog\/how-to-design\/","title":{"rendered":"How to DESIGN"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Color<\/p>\n

Your product’s design determines your maximum consumer appeal, performance, and profitability.\u00a0 Your manufacturing, marketing, and sales efforts seek to achieve the design’s potential.\u00a0 Your product can never be better than it is designed to be.<\/p>\n

As the primary stakeholder in your invention’s success, you need to be intimately involved with its design. Even though you may have several industrial designers, engineers, and consultants contribute, you are still the one deciding what the design goals are, which directions to explore, and when we are finished.\u00a0 This post is an inventors guide to managing 3D CAD services.<\/p>\n

As a professional design engineer, I don’t expect the typical inventor to do their own CAD design any more than a doctor expects his patients to do their own stitches. \u00a0It’s not that you couldn’t, it’s just generally a painful route. \u00a0But, like your doctor, designers need critical input and feedback from you throughout the design process. \u00a0Here are four tips for entrepreneurs seeking to maximize the creative design process.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. \n

    Write it down<\/h2>\n

    Establishing a vision match with your design team is like picking the corner stone for a building.\u00a0 It all lines up from there, so be specific and don’t rush.\u00a0 In what is often called a requirements document<\/a>, the inventor needs to describe what customer problem a product solves, and what success metrics will be used.\u00a0 Requirements cover both business and technical topics.\u00a0 Discuss these requirements with your team, and make sure they can re-iterate them with understanding.\u00a0 The format isn’t important, and yes the requirements may change along the way, but what’s most important is that they are discussed, understood, and agreed upon.<\/li>\n

  2. \n

    Be descriptive beyond words<\/h2>\n

    Do you like writing?\u00a0 I hope so, because if a picture takes 1000 words, a fully engineered, manufacturing ready 3D model takes 1000^3. That’s a billion for the non enginerds out there.\u00a0 You and your design team can save a lot of word time by using pictures to communicate.\u00a0 You probably expect your CAD designer to send you screenshots and an Autodesk\u00ae\u00a0Design Review\u00a0or<\/a>\u00a0SolidWorks\u00ae\u00a0eDrawings\u00ae<\/a>\u00a0file to review as your design progresses.\u00a0 But, have you considered that your feedback can also be visual?\u00a0 I love it when my clients find pictures of colors, materials, and shape online to guide our discussions.\u00a0 I also instruct them to sketch their change requests right on top of the screenshots I send.\u00a0 They can use the 3D Design Review or eDrawigns file to take their own screenshots to point out question areas.\u00a0 I’ve had clients build models out of clay to show me on a video call.\u00a0 All of these techniques cut down discussion time by clearly articulating concepts visually.<\/li>\n

  3. \n

    Design for manufacturing<\/h2>\n

    For many, manufacturing is such a costly part of bringing a product idea to market that they have to raise investment funds.\u00a0 Some individuals take a licensing approach and pass the burden on to another company, along with a majority of the profitability.\u00a0 No matter which route you take, realize your design will determine your manufacturing costs well before you start seeking production volume bids.\u00a0 Routinely ask your design engineers, \u201cHow will we manufacture that?\u201d\u00a0 Spend time learning about the materials and fabrication techniques recommended.\u00a0 Keep track of your expected volume and unit cost projections as a design advances.\u00a0 By the time you are done with your design team, you should know enough about the manufacturing process of your product to start contacting suppliers yourself.\u00a0 If you don’t like their manufacturing bids, they will simply tell you to go back and change the design.<\/li>\n

  4. \n

    Predict performance<\/h2>\n

    Product sales are difficult to judge before you have a product to show. Product performance goals are often not measured until a physical prototype exists.\u00a0 Even then it may not perform the way a mass production version will.\u00a0 With modern technology, you don’t really have to wait until a prototype is done to start collecting performance data.\u00a0 You should be showing trusted advisers photorealistic renderings of your product during the design cycle, when their input can be incorporated most cost effectively.\u00a0 Your engineers should be telling you exactly how much your product will weigh well before you hold it.\u00a0 They have technology that can tell you how long your product will last using material A vs material B. Such research and analysis can be costly and time consuming, but consider this truth:<\/p>\n

    Knowing the answers to performance questions gets easier with time, however improving the answers gets more difficult.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Your product’s design determines your maximum consumer appeal, performance, and profitability.\u00a0 Your manufacturing, marketing, and sales efforts seek to achieve the design’s potential.\u00a0 Your product can never be better than it is designed to be. As the primary stakeholder in your invention’s success, you need to be intimately involved with its design. Even though you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,2],"tags":[15,3],"class_list":["bg-stuff"],"yoast_head":"\nHow to DESIGN - 123DESIGNS<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/123designs.biz\/blog\/how-to-design\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How to DESIGN - 123DESIGNS\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Your product’s design determines your maximum consumer appeal, performance, and profitability.\u00a0 Your manufacturing, marketing, and sales efforts seek to achieve the design’s potential.\u00a0 Your product can never be better than it is designed to be. 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