Thanks for the comment. Glad the information is helpful to you! If you’d like to see more on a given topic, do let me know.

The things I wrote here apply to me personally, not to any job in particular. I’ve only ever worked at HP, Black & Decker, and Bose. But if I were to work at IDEO, Dell, or Alessi, the above would still apply.

It is not always easy, as my colleagues often disagree with me on many of these topics. I just have to remind myself that I am an individual, and that my individual approach to design is valuable, as are the various approaches of the other designers on my team. The important thing is that we find ways of working together, and valuing true diversity within the group.

Be yourself and have fun!

The bike’s on the mend. Finally isolated the problem a couple of weeks ago :) She’ll be on the road by spring!

Adam

Just discovered your blog yesterday, and found the Illustrator tutorials immensely helpful. I also found the above post refreshingly level-headed, unlike much of the design stuff I’ve been reading lately. As a Junior ID student looking for an internship, can you recommend any firms that practice design in the capacities you mentioned above?

Either way, thanks again for the blog. It’d be great to see how you use your ‘tools’ in the design process.

And good luck with the motorcycle!

I don’t really see any advantage to “going back and forth” from CATIA to SolidWorks, as Catia can do everything SolidWorks can do and much more. The fact that SW can now “read” native CATIA files doesn’t mean that it can bring in CATIA’s powerful node-based history tree; which to me is the primary reason for using CATIA in the first place. So I’d tend to choose one or the other: SW, or CATIA.

As for Alias Studio, it’s a polarizing app. Some like the interface, some (myself among them) loath it. I’ve often referred to it as “carpel-tunnel in a box”, because of the insane and constant repetitive contortions your left hand is forced to do in order to operate the software. In my opinion, Alias is a remnant of a by-gone era, when powerful surfacing tools were not available in solid-modelers.

As for bringing geometry from Alias into SW, you’d most likely bring it in as a “dumb” file, like STP or IGS. The geometry will be usable, but not editable. I’d steer clear of this methodology, as it will ultimately slow you down when you come to the next revision.

Alias would have you believe that automotive studios use Studio Tools for their final geometry; this is usually not the case. Typically the geometry built by designers in Studio Tools is then re-built from scratch in an engineering package like UGS or CATIA. I’d as soon cut out Alias altogether, and just jump right into the latter.

Then again, I’m biased, since I think the Alias interface is atrocious. If you can work quickly in it, more power to you!

Adam

I would like to learn Alias studio tbough. The interface seems nice. How would one go about using an Alias car body for example in SW?

what software?

I am a rhino hack and slash person that hates rebuilding fillets

You mention a couple of things here.

1. SolidWorks has increasingly good surfacing capabilities. The vast majority of surfacing needs can be met from within SolidWorks for the generation of final geometry. If you’re wanting to interactively push/pull surfaces in and out organically, you’re going to need to move to a better surfacing package like Catia, UG, Rhino, or Alias. I personally don’t work that way; I create constrained surfaces from curves and parameters. That being the case, SolidWorks is an okay solution (though Catia and UG are much better).

2. As for the necessity of working between CAD packages, it’s an issue that the whole industry is wrestling with at the moment. SolidWorks does read Rhino files and vise-verse, but I haven’t used this functionality. I typically will be happy to use SolidWorks geometry in Rhino, but never the other way ’round: I would never create a surface in Rhino and expect to use it in SolidWorks. The software may allow you to do it, but I wouldn’t recommend it. If you’re not careful, Rhino will make very bad geometry that will cause all kinds of problems in SolidWorks.

That said, in a multi-CAD environment, Rhino becomes the obvious center hub. It’s great for organizing CAD from other packages, which can then be exported piece-meal for editing elsewhere. Rhino/Spaceclaim is a good combo for this, but SolidWorks->Rhino works well too.

I can say that I’ve spent a good bit of time and energy this year in trying to work Rhino into my process, but ultimately I still avoid doing serious work in it; I much prefer the flexibility that parametric gives me.

Good luck!