How does Blender help in industrial design? Interview with Claas Kuhnen
Meet industrial designer Claas Kuhnen who uses Blender for a big part of his work.
Claas writes:Hi folks, Render.ST interviewed me about my design work and how I use Blender in academia and professionally for industrial design. This might be interesting for others to read who are curious about using Blender for design work.
Interesting read.
“The wood construction was send to Fusion 360 where I converted the polygon mesh into NURBS models”
This was automatic conversion to NURBS or you just redrawn everything in Fusion? Also how can I import a Fusion model with materials into Blender? I have problems making Fusion and Blender to cooperate nice between them.
Hi ARTISANICVIEW,
Fusion offers you two options:
1. Create a T-Splines feature and load sub-d ready geometry into it.
When you exit the T-S edit mode Fusion will convert the T-S surface into NURBS patches.
2. Create a Base Feature and load a flat polygon mesh (sheets of wood planks and such)
There in the Base Feature you have to manually convert the Mesh to BRep (NURBS)
When you exit the Base Feature edit mode you will have the NURBS surfaces ready to use in the timeline.
Pretty nice workflow because you can use each organic or linear shapes later in Fusion without the need
to rebuild everything.
Obviously that means the model in Fusion is not parametric but well thats is not always a problem.
In the end everything was finetunes and modeled ready in Blender (modifiers offering parametric values) and thus the static model in Fusion was not a down side.
Thank you for this short how-to. I will try your how-to as soon as I will have some spare time.
I’m making some kitchens designs using a software build with AutoCAD LT and I want to render them in Blender but in Blender I can’t import DWG with materials and I found that the only program capable of doing the correct import of the DWG and export for Blender is Rhino. Seems that also Fusion360 have some good DWG import capabilities but I had a hard time exporting the meshes with materials assigned from Fusion to Blender. From Rhino I can export wia FBX and will retain the materials associated. In Blender I’m only changing the initial materials with ones made for Cycles using the Materials Utils add-on and ready to render.
I move data between Autocad and Blender (teaching in Interior Design) mainly as DXF. True that might skip materials but in the end I want and need to rebuild and fine tune materials in Cycles anyway. So starting fresh is not a big problem on my side.
Fusion to Blender is still a disaster because it only allows you to use STL. Terrible. So I use STEP export and MOI3D for obj NGON exports.
However Thea Render export also uses the STL mesh data and if meshed fine enough it is fine. I just rather like light meshes.
I am curious how FBX would work out in the near future.
I’m more into technical industrial design, machine concepts robots, inventions etc.
So its a bit less about sleekly designs, but more like, would this work ?, (before building), blender helps a lot in visualization for us part of a group of inventors, later someone can work the details out in autocad or so.
Or we build without those details (KISS concept) a proof of concepts, what we like about blender is that we are able to animate, emulate machines, to early detect flaws or improvements. And also be able to get some good renders to our sales person and customers, we’re a small group of robotic enthusiasts. Sometimes i feel sad i cannt post my works in public, but i feel glad i can use Blender for this in my work time
Hi Peter,
I actually use/teach Blender for two purposes. While obviously you can sculpt complicated shapes much faster with sub-D, Blender I think is a terrific tool for fast rough prototyping. Fusion has mechanics and now actually extremely useful and powerful joints. But the stet-up work and restriction often I feel make it less usable for speedy concept exploration.
Too bad you cannot post your work because I would have loved to include that in my lecture to show the student what all is done in the name of 3D modeling.
We used Blender extensively in all aspects of the development of our first hardware product, Scriba. This included: sketch design, aesthetic modelling, animation, 3d-printing, preliminary DFM, review of engineering drawings, preparation of patent drawings, rendering, ergonomic testing, rigging, compositing… seriously, all in blender. Blender is a phenomenal tool and provided us with the right environment to work efficiently and flexibility to create seemingly nuanced changes that had a big impact on the look and feel of the stylus.
http://www.getscriba.com
We are now collaborating with Autodesk to create a feature driven workflow using geometry created by some of our consultants by bring this into Fusion 360. This this allows us to work with this geometry in a linear-workflow and without that destructive tessellation that comes with the .stl conversion.
We have also tested the conversion of our (mostly quad-ed models) to T-splines in Fusion and the results work really well. Our workflow is now evolving to make the most of these unexpectedly complimentary software tools which we believe will give us the best of both worlds.
David
man this sounds fantastic! Great to see that there are also others who do not care about industrial design buzz words but rather see what tools are there and if or how they could be implemented for your design workflow and meet your needs.
If you have anything to share for my students I would be very happy.
Hey Claas,
It has to be about finding the right tools for the job and being able to work in a way that allows you design, test and change with as few impediments as possible. There are some really powerful tools out there, but there is no goldilocks modelling-rendering tool that does everything for everybody. I think that what we are using now is a good mix of tools that allows us to work from concepts through to production information as fluidly as possible.
Finding free (and free for now) software that are supported by strong communities that provide support and constant improvement of the software is a revelation to me. The learning process has come a long way from picking up a tome with the pile of floppy disks and trying to get your head around it.
I drafted up a bit of a case study for Blendernation that I never quite finished. I talked about my background, and the use of Blender and may provide an insight to your students of how Blender can be applied to real world hardware development.
As an architect, I have been 3d modelling for over 20 years to help me visualise and develop design concepts. I was interested in the technology, let’s be honest, you have to be when you are working in 3d, but my real focus was design and being able to find a tool that helped me tell my story. I cut my teeth originally with 3d Studio Version 3 and from there I realised the potential that this medium offered the architect and designer.
Time passed, I built an architectural practice that gained a reputation for good design, we won an international design competition (for the U2 Tower), I found myself in management, but I still designed the same way – sketches on paper, quick 3d models to illustrate spaces, more detailed models that could be developed up to help clients make decisions.
Recently, with the change in the economy, I pivoted, I moved into industrial design to both explore a long term interest and challenge myself in a different field – there were only so many house extensions that a man can do! I needed the right tool for my new job, a tool that would allow me to constantly iterate in a way that could be rapid and messy when I wanted to be messy – yet precise when it needed to be.
Despite being the owner of numerous licenses of expensive ‘commercial’ 3d modelling tools, I fell in love with what at first appeared to be a cooky piece of open source software. But, I don’t think that it was the software that got me hooked first, it was the community. Rather than wading through pages of manuals to understand complex functions or placing service requests on forums, for every issue that I encountered there were a number of beautifully curated videos or articles and blog posts. Or simply people to ask
I looked at the UI, I followed the tutorials, I persevered – I couldn’t quite switch over to the right button for selection, but I won’t go into that. I read articles, here on Blendernation on a daily basis, on the ability to model, render and animate using our favourite piece of open-source software. The constant flow of innovation and features was inspiring – I was converted, I downloaded the betas, I went back through over a year’s worth of posts – it became a healthy obsession.
About two years ago, I came up with a seemingly simple idea for a new type of stylus for mobile devices. I realised that the stylus should be designed around the user, rather than merely adapting a form that had evolved to contain pencil lead or ink. This design was to become Scriba, a totally new stylus that we launched on Kickstarter this week.
There are no buttons, Scriba is activated by a squeeze motion and the organically shaped body bends in response to gentle pressure—this can be used to control attributes such as line-weight rather than relying on applied pressure to a small rubber tip. Unlike a button-controlled stylus, Scriba the squeezing action can be programmed to provide instant access to a whole range of software functions without changing settings or fumbling with options.
Around this design, I built a team and we have spent the last two years carefully studying the way we hold our pencils, pens and brushes, where we place stress, the angle we draw at and how our hands balance. The complex forms and sculptural geometries have been achieved with the extensive use Blender’s toolset of subdivision surfaces, modifiers and cages. Scriba has been lovingly crafted from the outset to sit comfortably in your hand. Blender made it possible to efficiently test and iterate the design responding to customer feedback. This facilitated a process that involved preparing nearly 100 prototypes that tested all aspects of the design.
Blender was to become the cornerstone of this development process for Scriba. From concept design through prototyping, testing, rigging, rendering, animation, preparing patent drawings, video grading and conversion – all have been done in Blender.
We are initially developing software for iOs, however long term, we are looking to expand this method of integration to other platforms. We see real benefits that could be offered to the Blender designer, say enriching the grease pencil experience or using the pinching motion to revolutionise sculpting workflows. This really is just the beginning of our story.
Please support our Kickstarter campaign at kickstarter.getscriba.com
If you want to find out more you will find us at http://www.getscriba.com