All this sounds fantastic – FEA, CFD, ID, etc etc….now tot up the cost of all that software, tot up the cost of the skill needed to drive it (pardon the pun), and now try to evaluate the ROI on that investment.

I know nothing about Golf, but I know a lot about other sporting goods. CAD companies and associated businesses like to think these products will be designed virtually to the nth degree but the reality is that state of the art equipment requires tweaking in the field.

Do you think you win (say) the Tour de France on bikes that have never been physically tested and refined? CAD tools are a good starting point – and valuable for helping to identify refinement paths – but they will never replace the physical prototype where function is critical.

Many of the world leaders in sporting goods and specialist areas are small companies who simply cannot justify spending tens of thousands per seat on a CAD system – it is FAR more cost effective to use a generic system, allied to skilful people who can make parts and skilful people who can test those parts.

Bottom line – the most important tool is the person running the project.

I wanted to run a story idea by you about a new 3D design software from Dassault Systèmes, FashionLab, that is gaining traction within the fashion community and she thought you may be interested in the story. FashionLab has received the backing of such luminaries as Julien Fourniè, Jonathan Riss and François Quentin who have described developing their design in 3D as “game changing.” Here’s a quick video to give you an idea of how fashion designers use FashionLab: http://vimeo.com/32925829.

The best way I can explain the technology is using a Project Runway analogy. In each episode, the designers dutifully scribble down their sketches on a tablet and then build their garments based on that 2D sketch. As you know, sometimes designers get in trouble because of the way a particular material is draped or the look of it from a non-head-on angle. FashionLab would enable the designers to not only view and design their garment from a 360 degree angle and also simulates the drape and look of the garment based on the materials the designer is intending to use. This helps designers avoid putting together garments that are not ready for the runway and finding that out only after spending hours putting it all together.

Julien Fourniè’s story, in particular, is interesting because he was able to take a design from start to Fashion Week in only a few weeks. He was in a time crunch for the all-important event and was able to design, construct and walk a garment down the runway in an abbreviated amount of time because of his use of FashionLab.

If you’re interested in learning how 3D technology is altering the fashion world, I’d be happy to put you in touch with a Dassault Systèmes spokesperson if you’d like to learn more about the technology. Let me know if you’d like to move forward or have any questions.

Best,
Alex

Alex Parrella
Account Executive | fama PR
Liberty Wharf | 250 Northern Avenue | Suite 300 | Boston, MA 02210
p: 617-986-5021 | m: 617-602-6160 | e: Alex@famapr.com
Twitter: @AJParrella

Boston’s #1 company to work for 2 years in a row
And the only PR firm named to the BBJ’s “Best Places to Work” 5 years in a row (2007-2011)

Although it might be career-limiting to say it, I am not a golfer.

I assume that in order to get a golf club to sell, it must perform well. I suspect that look, feel, brand, and celebrity endorsements are ultimately more important, although some of those factors are likely derived from performance. My marketing brain suspects that fancy-sounding technology sound bites can greatly increase profitability. Did the Nike Air really cause basketball players to jump higher? Was it a brilliant product/market fit?

But to answer your question, if I wanted to compete in a high-performance market, I would want to have the best team I could afford using the best tools for the job. CAE would come first. Ideally, CFD would drive the overall geometry shape directly, so the resulting surface geometry would drive the overall shape of the head. Specifically, the hard constraints such as the angle of the striking face, approximate volume, etc., and resulting surface geometry with low drag would result. Some mesh-to-surface workflow might be helped through a reverse engineering tool such as Geomagic. If CFD-generated surfaces aren’t practicable, then you’re looking and a multivariate design optimization on surface control points. You might be able to get away with that in a history-based modeler, but I would probably turn to an aerodynamic surface heavy-lifter like Multi-Surf.

Once you have the CFD geometry optimized, you’re looking at a three pronged problem. ID, materials, and FEA converge. Let’s back off of ID for a moment. Although the outer surfaces are fixed, the internal geometry probably has many degrees of freedom. It seems to me that the next step is to wire the geometry to the simulations using an MDAO tool like ANSYS Workbench, Esteco Modefrontier, Noesis Optimus, or perhaps even manage everything from the top down in Comet. For geometry, I’m partial to direct modeling, so I can dimension and optimize one model many different ways through various simulations without having to create many different constraint regimes to juggle my different simultaneous modeling intentions. To my knowledge, SpaceClaim* is the best product for the geometry part of the equation once the tricky surfaces are defined.

Along the way, I would intimately involve industrial designers. Assuming that the geometry is mostly generated from engineering, I would have them refining the styling and producing deliverables I could use to sell the idea to potential customers and partners. For that, a Rhino or Modo would probably be the best fit, along with a really fast renderer like Keyshot so they can quickly work up different color and style combinations.

But I am not an expert in precisely what tools are best, which is why I would surround myself with the best talent and let them use the tools they need. 1-2 engineers and a great designer or outsourced design firm should do it. What I would not do is force everybody do use a big box store CAD system that has a long laundry list of features but isn’t excellent at anything in particular. In fact, I probably wouldn’t bother documenting the design more than necessary to get it mass produced, which is surprisingly little nowadays.

The process I outlined isn’t something I invented to answer your question. I’m extrapolating some workflows my customers have shown me. Although I’m still no expert engineer and designer, this is how I’ve seen it done by the best.

Thanks,
-Blake

* I’m an employee of SpaceClaim Corporation

What Dassault is showing appears to be a much higher level of integration with a much better user interface and I think this type of fully integrated approach has been needed for quite sometime when it comes to surfacing.

Jon Banquer
San Diego, CA
http://cadcamtechnologyleaders.blogspot.com/p/fully-integrated-cadcam.html

I don’t think customers will need to “demand” similar capabilities from other vendors. Those vendors will certainly look at CATIA Natural Sketch, and draw inspiration from it.

Still, there are other conceptual design tools out there.

If Dassault won’t make this kind of advanced technology available others will when enough of their customers start demanding it.

I think this video gives an even better overview of how Catia Natural Sketch fits into Catia

http://youtu.be/EWs4DsH3mdM

The entire approach that Dassault is using is to me much more advanced than say Autodesk Alias and Inventor or what Siemens NX offers.

Jon Banquer
San Diego, CA
http://cadcamtechnologyleaders.blogspot.com/

How do you imagine the designers who are out of DS’s sights today, may end up accessing natural sketch technology in the future?