Innovation in product design: from CAD to virtual prototyping

195 Pages·2011·3.337 MB·English

by  Bordegoni, Monica(Editor);Rizzi, Caterina

Innovation in Product Design
Monica Bordegoni Caterina Rizzi
•
Editors
Innovation in Product Design
From CAD to Virtual Prototyping
123
Monica Bordegoni Caterina Rizzi
Dipartimentodi Meccanica Dipartimentodi IngegneriaIndustriale
Politecnico diMilano Università diBergamo
Via G.LaMasa, 1 Viale G.Marconi n.5
20156Milan 24044Dalmine, BG
Italy Italy
e-mail: [email protected] e-mail: [email protected]
ISBN 978-0-85729-774-7 e-ISBN978-0-85729-775-4
DOI 10.1007/978-0-85729-775-4
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To Umberto
Preface
The advent of computers has changed the practice of engineering forever. No
product is designed today without the use of computer-aided design (CAD)
technology. This practice, introduced about 40 years ago, has resulted in more
reliableproductsthatarelessexpensivetoproduceandthataremoreattractiveto
potentialcustomers.Ithasalsochangedthetechnicaleducationandthepracticeof
numerous professionals.
The idea for this book was born with the aim of giving an overview of the
research fields and achievements on methods and tools for product design and
innovation.
Theintroductionofcomputersinengineeringisdatedbacktothe1960s,when
computer-based graphic systems were developed with the aim of supporting
engineering design, and improving the productivity of engineers. The importance
and benefits were strongly recognized by large manufacturing companies, espe-
cially those in the automotive and aerospace industries.
In 1963 Ivan Sutherland developed his thesis entitled ‘‘Sketchpad: a Man-
Machine Graphical Communication System’’, which can be considered to be the
ancestor of modern CAD tools, as well as a major breakthrough in the develop-
ment of computer graphics in general. In 1969 he also built the first Heads-up
displayattheUniversityofUtah.Hehadthecapabilityofenvisagingtheimpactof
thistechnologyondesignandengineering,andhecanbeconsideredtheprecursor
of current Virtual Reality technologies. Since then, the technology has quickly
evolveddevelopingverysophisticatedandperformingvisualizationandrendering
systems, as well as human computer interaction systems.
Since the early 1960s, computer graphics (CG) was attracting many people
from the research field. At the beginning, CG and CAD were in some sense
overlapping.Infact,CADwasthemarketingapplicationofCGtechnologies,and
inmanycasesitbecamethesynonymof2-Dor3-Dgeometricmodeling.Several
theoretical studies were carried out not only by academic scientists, but also by
industrialists.Justtomentionfewofthem,S.Coonsin1967introducedamethod
to describe free-form doubly curved surfaced of a very general kind. Automotive
companies like Renault investigated on the mathematical definition of complex
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surfaces.Inparticular,in1968Bezierdevelopedaspecifickindofcurvesusedfor
describing exterior car panels. In 1974 Requicha and Voelcher proposed a high-
level description of products based on the constructive solid geometry—CSG
approach.Sincethen,andformorethan30years,theevolutionoftoolsforproduct
design has focused on the development of geometric modeling capabilities with
the aim of reproducing complex shapes.
In the 1980s the research interest focused more and more on tools for sup-
porting the product development activities, which were not solely addressing the
product geometry. These tools aimed at not just documenting the result of the
productdesign,butaimedatcapturinghowtoreachtheresult.Theirdevelopment
wasbasedontheconsiderationthatthedesignprocessincludesknowledge.Infact,
knowledge is into the methodologies used, and into the decisions taken by the
productengineersduringthedesign.Therefore,followingthisnewtrend,thetools
moved from being geometry-based to be parametric-based and feature-based.
Features are intended as high-level entities that give a meaning to a set of geo-
metric elements (e.g. faces, patches, ribs, pockets), which can be therefore
manipulated directly without requiring a great skill and deep knowledge of the
underlying mathematical models. The feature concept has been successfully
adopted in mechanical engineering, as well-documented by Shah and Mäntylä
in 1995. In the domain of aesthetic shapes, characterized by the great level of
freedom that the designer has when defining product shapes, the so-called free-
form features have been defined and widely studied. Free-form features are also
intendedtoconveytheemotionstheusershavewhenlookingandtouchingshapes.
Geometricmodelingstartedbeinghandledbykernelswhowereseparatedfrom
the CAD tools. Besides, the CAD vendors were not anymore the drivers of
technologiesdevelopment,butothersectorsweretakingtheirplace,suchasgame
and movie, and the military sectors.
Starting from the late 1980s, new technologies were introduced that were
capableofelaboratingcomplexproblemsandwhosecostdecreasedmoreandmore.
Specifically, Personal Computers and workstations were introduced as a new and
emergingmarket sector, and Microsoft andthe NT operating system took hold.
In the context of product development, industry realized that managing the
productgeometryisonlyapartofthedesignproblem.Infact,themanagementof
theproductinformationandoftheproductdevelopmentprocessiscrucialaswell.
Therefore, the attention was focused on engineering knowledge management,
on modeling and simulation of processes, as well as on business process
re-engineering (BPR).
Industryunderstoodtheimportanceofmanagingknowledgeabouttheproducts.
Engineering knowledge management has been introduced to bring knowledge
about the product characteristics (materials, assembling, manufacturing, etc.) into
the design process. Applications based on knowledge management allow us to
design and configure a product, on the basis of a set of rules, which have been
previouslyformalizedandimplementedintotheapplication.Productconfigurators
have been proposed with the aim to allow us to engineer a product by satisfying
customer’s requirements and standards of a specific domain, even if the product
Preface ix
hasneverbeendevelopedinthepast.Theadventofknowledge-basedengineering
(KBE) applications profitably helped in simplifying and automating, even if not
fully, the configuration process, both from a commercial and technical point of
view.Productandprocessknowledgeisstructured,soastobringanoptimization
of company’s design processes, to maximize the reuse and sharing of company
knowledge, and to integrate systems and documents within a unique application
for products automatic configuration.
Thankstothecontinuousincreaseofcomputationalpowerandperformancesof
computers, analysis and simulation practices started to be introduced into the
product development process, as well as the use of the digital mock-up (DMU).
The introduction of effective tools for computer-aided engineering (CAE) has
affectedtheproductdesignpractice.Inparticular,thesimulationisusedinproduct
design with a double function. Early in the initial design phases, it supports
decision-making; whereas later it helps in validating the design with respect to
specifications. Currently, the validation function is widely practiced in industry
and this is where most investment is made.
The DMU was a full representation of a machine or of a system including all
geometrical details. It was a sort of static representation used to check the colli-
sions among the parts. Subsequently, the DMU has evolved into what we call
today virtual prototyping, where the product geometry is enriched with product
properties.Virtualprototypesareusedtofaithfullyrepresentthe‘‘product-to-be’’,
so as to be able to simulate its features, performances, functionality and usage
before the real product is actually built. Virtual prototyping is more and more
becomingadiffusedpracticeinproductdevelopmentofvariousindustrialsectors.
Severalresearchworkshaveshownthatvirtualprototypescanbeeffectivelyused
tovalidatethedesignsolutions,alreadyintheearlyphaseofproductdesign,when
the engineering of the product is also in the early phase or even not started. This
practice can also be used for checking the correspondence of the concept design
withtheuser’sneeds,andalsoforcheckingtheusers’acceptanceofnewproducts
through tests performed directly with end users.
For many years, researchers have worked on visualization issues, and the
resultingtoolsareverygoodintermsofrenderingthevisualeffectsoftheproducts
they can provide. Shades, reflections and textures contribute in enriching the
productappearance.Physicalprototypeshavetraditionallybeenacommonwayof
representingaproductdesign:physicalmodelsareproduced,ofteninarealscale,
toevaluateaproductbyexploringitvisuallyandhaptically.Inthelastdecade,the
interactionwith virtualobjects has been extendedwith the possibility oftouching
the object surface and of physically handling its parts, which is practically
implementedthroughhapticdevices.Today,thankstothecurrentadvancesofthe
technology,theimplementationofvirtualprototypingapplicationscanbebasedon
virtual reality technologies, where products and environments are fully virtual, or
on augmented or mixed reality technologies, where the product and the environ-
ment consist of a mix of virtual and real components.
Startingfromthe1990stheattentionofindustryhasmovedtoamorestrategic
vision and to the idea that it is not important specifying what has to be
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manufactured and produced, but the product life cycle is also important from the
marketing point of view. The new technologies are applied to increasingly com-
plex projects. This means managing massive amounts of design data. PLM—
product lifecycle management tools have been introduced with the aim of
increasing the industrial productivity. PLM manages all the phases of product
design, from conception, to manufacturing, service and disposal, and integrates
people, data, processes and business systems.
PLMsystemsareextendingtheirdomainofapplicationupwardthepreliminary
phases of design and by embedding more abstract representations of the product,
but still they are far from systematizing inventive design phases and the link
betweenthedevelopmentofaconceptualsolutionandthedefinitionoftheproduct
geometry. Recently, computer-aided innovation (CAI) systems have started
addressing these lacks, but the domain borders of this emerging technology are
still fuzzy and in any case CAI systems suffer of limited interoperability with
downstream computer-aided tools.
Virtualizationandknowledgemanagementhavebeenrecognizedastwomega-
trends for the period to come. This book presents a variety of research topics
related to product development and innovation from experts in many different
fields. Chapter 1 includes an overview of the history of tools for product design
that evolved in the current tools for the whole product life cycle management.
Chapter 2 deals with new and more effective methods for conceptual and
embodiment design of products, which are based on the automation of embodi-
ment designtasks.Chapter3aimsathighlighting theroleofknowledgeasakey
enabler for effective engineering activities in the light of emerging enterprise
collaborationmodels.Anoverviewandresearchissuesonmethodologiesandtools
for knowledge management of products are presented and discussed in Chaps. 4
and5.Inparticular,Chap.4introducesprinciplesandtoolsfordesignautomation
in mechanical engineering and methodologies for real industrial applications,
whileChap.5discussesabout productknowledgeoftheindustrialdesigndomain
thatisformalizedintoform-features.Chapter6describessomeaspectsofhowthe
evolution ofcomputer-aided engineeringhas affected the product design practice.
The subject is treated from an industrial point of view, where some examples
typicaloftheaeronauticalfieldaregiven.Chapter7dealswithmethods,toolsand
issues related to the practice of Virtual Prototyping used in the product develop-
ment process. Chapter 8 presents the state-of-the-art in the domain of digital
humanmodelsusedforproductvalidationandassessments.Finally,Chap.9deals
with the generation of the physical models of products, and discusses about how
the physical prototyping process influences the product design.
Wehopethereaderwillenjoyandlearnaboutthehistory,theevolutionandthe
future perspective of research in the domain of methods and tools for product
design and innovation.
Milan, February 2011 Monica Bordegoni
Bergamo, February 2011 Caterina Rizzi
Acknowledgment
All the authors of this book are grateful to Umberto Cugini, for his guidance
teachings,forhiscontinuousinspiringideasandvisionaboutthefutureofmethods
and tools for product development, with which he has directed our research and
careers.
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