The Art of Product Design: Changing How Things Get Made

Chapter 1

Gearheads Get No Respect

Look around you. Unless you’re in an antique shop, almost any manufactured object you see was created by a mechanical engineer using computer-aided design (CAD) software. Like a cowboy and his horse, object creators and their three-dimensional (3D) CAD tools are almost inseparable today, so much so that after a long week working on CAD at the office, many will head straight to the basement after dinner on Friday to dive right back into CAD, working all weekend long on their hobby projects.

They are driven by a specific kind of intelligence and a particular passion. Much more than just a job, mechanical engineering is a calling that summons many of us in the sandbox. When asked what got them started, one gearhead after another will tell you something like: “I took apart every toy I got until they gave me LEGO. Then I started putting things together and never stopped.”

It’s good they have that passion driving them, because if it was all about glory, no one would pursue a career in mechanical engineering.

You see these engineers’ accomplishments everywhere, in innovations that drive economic growth and make the world a safer, greener, and more efficient place. But compared with the stars of other professions, such as architecture or design or medicine, mechanical engineers mostly toil away in quiet obscurity. It has always been rare to see an engineer profiled in the media (except perhaps in Popular Mechanics). In recent post–industrial age decades, ...