Use Cases

Far simpler digital-specification and visualisation of any structural assembly
(such as a bicycle, motorcycle or automobile).
Similar to Solidworks ().

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Mechanical CAD Domain Review

The first tools -- digital exchange and pre-production visualisation

The first product in this domain, was a Windows app designed to run on an advanced PC-workstation,
with specialised 3D graphics and large high-resolution screens.
It used keyboard and mouse input to enable a user to input the 3D specifications of objects.
These inputs could be visualised through a camera-view on a 2D screen.
The purpose was to enable digital exchange, between, designer, prototyper and production unit.
A digital specification could be used directly to control computer aided manufacturing tools.
A design could also be visualised before production.

Digital-first design

Over time, libraries of specified objects developed
and advancements in specification techniques such as parametric modelling were introduced.
The specification tool become more of a design tool and digital-first design started.
Digital-first design introduces a gap between design and produceability,
that has to be bridged.
A digital-domain design has to be verified for its physical performance parameters,
and each production iteration is usually expensive.
A traditional physical-protoype-update based design-process is lot cheaper and more efficient.
3D printing is a new technology that is directly connected to digital-domain-design.

Tool specialisation -- physics-based simulation and domain specicialisation

Some virtual physics-based simulation capabilities
such as finite-element-analysis, and motion and kinematic analysis were introduced.
This improved the predictability of a design's real-world performance.
Another direction of CAD tool specialisation was domain-specific modeling,
such as Weldments and sheet-metal production guidelines.
This improved production efficiency.

Tool proliferation, collaboration and cloud

The first tool was introduced in 1997 and since then several alternatives tools have developed. There are more than 10 active tools for MCAD today.
Initially, they all ran natively on a high-performance Windows PC.
Later tools transitioned to cloud-processing-based tools that ran inside web-browsers.
Cloud-based tools included robust collaboration and digital exchange capabilities.

Mechanical CAD continues to be a very active technology development domain.

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Competitors in MCAD

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Differentiating app-features

Simplicity.

The Specifier uses InterUnit-UI , instead of WIMP, which makes it far simpler to use.
InterUnit-UI is a new design paradigm that has far better ergonomics than WIMP.

Most existing tools are not that simple to use (they all use WIMP).
Shapr3D is a recent tool that has been specially designed for ease of use.

Use-centric design.

The Specifier is being designed in sync with the design of a bicycle-trailer prototype.
Hence it's design is use-centric and domain relevant.
This also makes the design a lot simpler, since it starts with a narrow target.

Some ergonomic modelling.

Includes some ergonomic modeling of the user of the design.

Hardware friendly.

The Specifier uses a hexagonal grid as an underlying graphic design basis.
This makes its computational complexity a lot lower.
It is also designed with a minimal feature-set and resource usage approach,
since it is an introductory tool.
It does not have to rely on 3D hardware acceleration.
It will be very responsive on average PC hardware as a native app.
It does not have any server side execution components (like cloud based tools).

Most existing tools are either native, requiring workstation class processors,
or cloud-based, implying browser and internet-bandwidth constraints.

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Availability

We are currently implementing a structural-specification and a visualisation component.
We plan to announce a demo date soon.

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Licensing

Khitchdee Design () plans to license the Specifier to industrial-designers and prototype developers.

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Existing CAD tools for industrial-design.

Solidworks is the CAD tool most often used for specifying an industrial design.
It is a full-featured CAD tool, not just for prototyping.
It is used by individual designers or small design teams.
Some features integrate with assembly-line production processes.
Another tool CATIA, by the the same company, provides Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) capability.
PLM is used in multi-generational large-scale design-and-produce projects.
Both Solidworks and CATIA provide design-specification capability.
They have somewhat steep learning curves being full-featured tools.

What is design-specification?

There are 2 aspects to the specification of a land-vehicle design.

1. A structural specification.
   A static description of the built up structure of a design.
   It includes a specification of each part in a design,
   how the parts connect with each other,
   and a structural model of the user (if applicable).
   
2. A construction-process specification.
   Specifies the construction-process of a design.
   How each component in the design is contructed
   and how the components are put together to produce the design.
   This is useful for an assembler or a fabricator.
   

What is specification visualisation?

A (design-specification) Visualiser implements perspective-correct display-screen mapping of modelled 3D objects.
Our visualiser models a camera with a location and orientation,
and a single light source, at the same orientation and location as the camera.

We represent a 3D object as its outer surface,
a lattice of 3D planar segments.
We map these 3D planar segments onto a 2D screen using 4-point plane-mapping.
A curved plane (in 3D) is modelled as a lattice of flat planes.
Our visualiser uses only the device's (2D) drawing engine,
and targets a visualisation time of 100ms/frame
for a bicycle-model at 4K resolution on an Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 SOC class device.

Construction-process specification in the Specifier (planned)

We plan to produce a construction-processes specification component
after the structural specification component.
The designer will identify several construction states in the construction process.
Each construction state will be a physical model of the relative placement of the components and tools in the process.
The designer will indicate transitions between construction states.
The construction-process specifier will use these construction states and transitions between them
to create an interpolated sequence of models to be visualised.
This sequence will be visualised using the Visualiser with some animation controls.

Photograph assisted specification in the Specifier (planned)

After the mouse and keyboard specification interface,
we plan to produce an additional interface to improve structural specification input efficiency.
This interface will work as follows:

1. A designer loads photographs of a real object into the app
   (with a description of the approximate camera parameters used in taking those photographs).
2. Identifies (in terms of 2D point descriptions) the components in the structure of the object in the photograph.
3. For each component, they describe its 3D orientation and size, based on physical measurements.

The Specifier uses these estimated descriptions to form a model of the object.

Structural overview of a bicycle

A bicycle is specified as a primary frame and components,
attachment mechanisms between them,
and additional braking and gear-ratio control systems.

A. The primary frame and components.

1. A frame consisting of:
   A head-tube, top-tube, down-tube and seat-tube.
   A seat-stay and a chain-stay at the back.
   A bottom bracket at the base of the frame.
   Connectors that connect the parts in the frame.
2. The front fork and handle-bar
3. The chain-drive consisting of:
   a chain crank and pedals
   a freewheel
   a chain
4. The front-wheel, front-wheel spindle and tire
5. The rear-wheel, rear-wheel spindle and freewheel attachment, and tire.

B. Attachment specifications between the primary frame and components.

C. The braking system and optional gear-ratio control systems.

1. A braking system and its attachment mechanism
2. A gear-ratio control system and its attachment machanism