How can your CAD program help me do this?
Ronen Kadushin is a Designer. That's with a big "D", as in Industrial Design (his degrees), or Furniture Design (his passion.)
The first time I saw Ronen's designs, I was reminded of a couple of quotations from Mies van der Rohe:
"A chair is a very difficult object. A skyscraper is almost easier."
"Each material has its specific characteristics which we must understand if we want to use it... We must remember that everything depends on how we use a material, not on the material itself."
Ronen's designs also raised a question in my mind. A rather simple question, I think: What CAD program would be capable of handling this sort of thing?
People that know me might be shocked to hear that I really don't know the answer to this question. (I have a reputation as a know-it-all. I have no idea where it comes from.)
If Ronen's designs were like Mies' designs, I could think of a half dozen suitable CAD programs. But Mies bent metal; Ronen ties it in knots. His work relies entirely upon the properties of the material for the final form of the piece.
So, consider this a request for help. Among the readers of this blog are people at dozens of CAD companies. If you're one of those people, imagine that Ronen showed you a picture like one of the ones here, and asked "How can your CAD program help me do this?"
What would your answer be?
Evan Yares
3 Comments
Reader Comments (3)
How could the CAD app help? seriously - I doubt it, maybe Alias, RHino.. but the real benefit could be if you could unfold it ... and creating a developable surface of those forms would be.. Fun.. seriously.. fun..
and this is 'relatively easy' because you're dealing with a thin gauge material. So, you can play with paper, get it right, scale it up, get it laser cut - then buy a very HEAVY set of gloves before you loose a hand folding it up.
Its when you get more structured, more variable forms - then you get into all that rapid prototyping/rapid manufacturing fun..
Have a look at
http://www.assaashuach.com
His work is incredible.
Or Materialise's range of products - therein lie some REAL challenges for geometry
http://www.materialise-mgx.com/
I use alias for furniture design similar to this.
To flatten this, my supplier uses fastblank
Rhino 3D is an excellent choice for this kind of modeling. And, for those designs that aren't just comprised of four-sided surfaces, T-Splines for Rhino (our plugin) would be an great choice. We specialize in these sort of organic, free form models. I'm not sure if we have an example of exactly this type of product, but here's an free-form jug that is at least in the same ballpark: http://www.tsplines.com/i/jar.jpg