Engineering for Industrial Designers and Inventors

Chapter 1. Design!

I have designed dozens of commercialized products and systems during my career, and none have started with an equation. They more often start with a walk. This initial reflection is followed by sketches, conversation, and a simple model until finally a design concept is developed. Upon this ascendant design, the rich technical apparatus of engineering and computers can be brought to bear.

Designers create order out of chaos, but design is not science—we need more than science in our quest to manipulate our environment. The goal of this book is to develop the “gut feel” and robust conceptual theory that can be drawn into the design process. The creative process of design is moderated by the physical and life sciences, but you can’t do mathematical modeling and computer simulation during brainstorming sessions.

Designers also appeal to more than the technical and mechanistic. We recognize that people surround themselves with beauty, whether the sparkle of a diamond or a poster of the Eiffel Tower. Functional sculpture can arise from the gifted and informed hands of the designer, but designing without a grasp of engineering fundamentals is like digging a hole without a shovel.

Intuition

The notion of “seeing air movement” or “feeling how a material behaves” is not a sophomoric approach to design—it is a necessary one. Design concepts can be proven or disproven by intuitive feel or simple experimentation. For example, when designing a mechanical linkage, there ...