CAD & creativity

Hi everyone,



Is CAD affecting your ability to be creative? I would like
to invite you to participate in a survey to help me find out. The link below
will take you to a short online survey that should take 5-10min to complete.
It

Brett,



I have had this conversation with people enginers and industrial
designers alike. creative is one of those words too that means so
much. Do you mean industrial design type of creative or are you
refering to solving problems.



CAD in general lets our brains visualize the model in 3d shadded mode
which frees up our limited intellegence to solve see and undertand
molding issues, draft curvature form ect. So in this case
yes it helps us to be more creative.



In terms of industiral design there are several schools of thought on
this. Some say the pencil and paper is best for creative
response. That is to say a pencil is however simply a tool.
And so is the WACOM tablet. As for proving
form? I say for industiral designers in Rhino where there
is no parent child relationships then just remodel it in rhino limits
my ability to reamain creative. using a partent child constraint
surfacing or solid modeler can make one adjust form very fast and
ultimatly prove out form thus yes more creative. As with
every product or graphic one should not be able to name that
tool. "oh, that looks like a solidworks round".



Define creative.

Hi Bart, Brett,

I realise these are old posts but I thought I'd say my piece anyway. As an industrial designer I still see myself as a problem solver in many respects. I do believe that CAD (particularly 3d modellers) can limit a designers creativity in that they are restricted in what they are able to achieve in the software. Since the time of your posts, surfacing capabiities in packages such as SolidWorks have become much more intuitive and offer greater flexibility as to what a novice can achieve. I believe, that the way in which CAD packages are taught to design/engineering students has a major impact on how they use them in their design activites. Would you guys agree/disagree?



John Burke,

PhD Candidate & TA in Product Design,

Dept. of Design & Manufacturing Technology,

University of Limerick