I found this article from Design News interesting because Dynamic Structures design spiral sounds very similar to the one used in the yacht building industry.

The following quote brought back some memories of yacht design where we used Inventor, AutoCAD, Navisworks (before Autodesk bought them), Rhino, ShipConstructor, and 3Ds Max for rendering and animations…

“Often we create a track in AutoCAD and use Inventor to design a vehicle,” continues Breckenridge. “Then we can put them together in 3D Studio (3ds) and produce an animation that shows what a ride will look like. We use Navisworks for visualization and dynamic simulation. Then we can play the video animation for clients so they can see what the vehicle looks like as seen from a spot on the ground. Or, we can show them what the ride looks like from the front seat.”

I don’t think the AutoCAD/Inventor workflow is efficient or accurate , but unfortunately, it is often necessary for many reasons.  The second part, about the visuals is spot-on. Clients now expect to see their project designed in 3D, and more and more they are demanding fly-throughs  and animations in addition to renderings.

Autodesk recently came out with the ‘Factory Design Suite’ suite of programs that give factory designers a full toolset at a better price, but a more generic toolset that goes from sketch to animations would likely have more mass appeal.  Just sayin’.

Read the rest of the article at Design News >>>