While driving into camp sites in a Mercedes Sprinter or a Ford Transit isn’t necessarily new to the world of RVers and campers, Storyteller Overland provides the ability to customize their units. The modular design elements provide customers with the ability to have their vehicle cater to their needs and develop different configurations for their adventures.

At the core of their success lies the innovative utilization of SOLIDWORKS and the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, which has transformed their design process, streamlined collaboration with suppliers and connected their team throughout the entire product development journey.

Engineering for Adventure

Michael Asutell, VP of engineering at Storyteller Overland, was part of a keynote presentation during 3DEXPERIENCE World where he provided some insight into engineering and designing a vehicle for experiencing adventure.

“We are an upfitter that equips outdoor enthusiasts with the tools they need to live free, explore endlessly and tell better stories,” he told the audience. “We’re born out of a spirit of grand adventure and we’re pursuing and passionately equipping those who are pursuing meaningful experiences and discovery, living life out on the open road and beyond.”

He heads a geographically dispersed team of industrial designers and mechanical engineers. Their process begins with industrial designers crafting concepts that capture the spirit of adventure and exploration.

Storyteller Overland’s vehicles have an emphasis on flexibility and modularity, providing their customers with customization options for their adventures. (Image credit: Storyteller Overland.)

Think of these vehicles as less cumbersome than an RV, with more utility than camping in an SUV. Designing for comfortable living while also being transportable is the immediate challenge. Compact is generally not in the same category as comfortable, but Storyteller Overland is about making their vehicles livable.

These concepts are then handed over to the mechanical engineers, who turn them into tangible realities and refine the design. From there, Asutell’s team works with the company’s quality and shop floor teams, as well as outside vendors, to get their custom components manufactured and installed on the vehicles.

Seamless Collaboration via the Cloud

With a rapidly growing company and the need for remote work and travel—they are a company promoting the concept of hitting the road, after all—Storyteller Overland opted for the 3DEXPERIENCE platform instead of traditional on-premise methods.

The platform became the central hub for storing, organizing and managing their data, enabling the team to access and work with 3D data seamlessly. By leveraging the platform's built-in data and lifecycle management capabilities, Storyteller Overland ensures that every team member stays aligned, allowing for real-time feedback and preventing unintended edits or working with out-of-date content.

“We've enabled our production engineering team, as well as senior management, to have access to our 3D data and that introduces the ability to receive their feedback in real time.”

Because Asutell and his team work with a variety of vendors to create the best possible experience for their customers, they needed communication beyond just team members. This can be tricky with proprietary info and specs. Controlling intellectual property while collaborating with external suppliers has always been a priority for Storyteller Overland.

“We're big on controlling our IP and I like that we can selectively share our data with numerous suppliers while protecting that IP. We provide supplier-controlled access to our models while we preserve the complete design context, so it seamlessly integrates with the supplier generated parts and any modifications they might have made to our designs.”

The vehicles that Storyteller Overland designs are built for both comfort and ruggedness, all while keeping unique customization in mind. (Image credit: Storyteller Overland.)

By playing to each individual's (and partner organization’s) strengths, the platform fosters collaboration and maximizes efficiency throughout the organization. Final designs can be locked down and released securely, ensuring that the integrity of the work is preserved.

Storyteller Overland's commitment to delivering exceptional adventure experiences and equipping outdoor enthusiasts with the means to explore has been simplified thanks to their cloud-based approach to the technical side of their business.

The company has transformed their design process, streamlined collaboration with external suppliers and connected their entire team throughout the product development journey. An integration of technology, understanding the value of flexible design and a passion for adventure has positioned Storyteller Overland as a leading force in the adventure vehicle industry, ready to create more life-changing experiences for those who seek the thrill of the open road.

Kara Tucker, a Product Development CAD Designer at Gibson, described the process of creating guitars using SOLIDWORKS. From the challenges of working with wood to the intricate reverse engineering process, Tucker sheds light on the meticulous craftsmanship behind each instrument.

Gibson is known for their legendary guitar shapes, but even with a steadfast history, there’s still engineering and design that needs to be done. (Image credit: SOLIDWORKS.)

Respecting the Wood

Tucker's journey to Gibson began with her experience working with wood and plastic at an escape-game company. Unlike common materials that are utilized in more traditional engineering work, wood is ever-changing and encompasses a range of species that present different qualities both at the production level and over the life of a guitar.

“I would describe my design work with the game company as wooden based structures—cabinets, with hardware, springs and magnets, stuff that pops out at you. The structures need to last because they are interacted with daily, and it’s very immersive. I learned a lot while I was working there and really got a feel for working with different kinds of species of wood.”

Each assembly of a guitar incorporates various woods and other materials that tend to stretch and deform over time. While this can be a challenge when manufacturing, it’s more about designing for what will come eventually—preparing the design to play well off the shelf and still play well after decades of aging.

Tucker and the engineers at Gibson aim to have tight tolerances while respecting the unique properties of wood. That’s why the company imports woods, and dries them to an 8 percent moisture content, lower than the industry standard of 12 percent, to minimize imperfections and ensure high-quality products.

She emphasized the need to work with the inherent characteristics of wood rather than against them, combining the skills of a woodworking artist and an engineer. The mechanical properties and hardness ratings of different wood species must be thoroughly understood to create successful designs.

Preserving History and Reverse Engineering

The rich history behind Gibson guitars is an essential element to not only preserving past features but also carrying them forward as they engineer instruments. To properly design and replicate the instruments, she delves deep into the historical context of each model, understanding the engineering intentions and the production processes of the past.

This knowledge allows her to design with purpose, respecting the original intent while considering the current production limitations. Reverse engineering plays a crucial role in the process, involving the use of 3D scanning technology from Creaform and software such as VXelements to move from mesh to CAD. Tucker and her team capture intricate details and dimensions of existing guitar models, retrofitting them into the SOLIDWORKS CAD environment.

“The shapes of the Explorer; the SG shape; the Les Paul shape. All of that is kind of already set in stone for us. Usually what ends up happening is the product development team will want to copy a neck. We'll take a 3D scanner and scan an artist's neck and reverse engineer that using our mesh-to-CAD workflow. What we're doing is trying to retrofit a very particular feel of a neck onto whatever our modern technology allows us to construct it.”

Neck profiles are a critical element in guitar design. Gibson guitars feature asymmetrical necks with unique profiles, ranging from rounded to slim taper designs. Legacy instruments that have adapted and changed over time are even more unique and vary greatly.

Gibson engineers use a mesh-to-CAD workflow to scan legacy instruments and get them into the SOLIDWORKS environment. (Image credit: SOLIDWORKS.)

Reverse engineering these necks requires meticulous attention to detail, using splines and asymmetrical geometry to replicate their contours accurately. Each model presents its own challenges and the design process demands a deep understanding of the hand operations and material removal during manufacturing.

When Tucker started at Gibson, many of the engineers were still working in 2D CAD. That means a major element of the reverse engineering process isn’t just replicating specific elements of artists’ guitars, but also documenting the shapes in 3D CAD. Creating a digital historical context for the different instruments is important and it allows the Gibson team to understand just how the instruments change over time.

Scanning and creating CAD models of legacy and artist instruments is important for reproducing unique products, and also for documenting. (Image credit: SOLIDWORKS.)

From CAD to Creation

Transitioning from the digital world of CAD to the physical creation of guitars requires planning—and more planning on the engineering side than you might expect. Tucker ensures that the CAD designs consider the manufacturing process, accounting for variations that occur during machining and assembly, as well as the hand-sanding and other manual work that is done to refine the final products.

Factors such as fingerboard dimensions and tensioning of truss rods must be carefully considered in order to achieve a playable instrument. The reverse engineering process often involves accounting for material removal of 50 to 70 thousandths of an inch to achieve the desired final product.

Tucker provided an example of the nuanced engineering that needs to occur when they are reverse engineering instruments for contemporary production.

“We had a carved top, and I took the joining fret information—where the neck joins the body—and that acts as a constraint. The bridge height and the bridge playability that you put on this assembly also acts as a constraint. From there, we have to play around with the design to make sure that the neck and body are joined in a preferred way. There might be a riser involved, or an existing riser needs to be more complex.” The tiny details can make or break a guitar’s design and playability.

Other times, the engineering work isn’t quite so constrained. For instance, they will sometimes have to develop full-on assemblies or rework various pieces of hardware. Tucker explained one project where they were developing a new tailpiece that would be more adjustable and springier. 

“Sometimes, it’s almost like a Mr. Potato Head sort of situation and then in other cases, it's brand-new stuff. It really varies based on what the end goal happens to be. Because I’m so detail oriented, my bosses have to remind me, ‘Kara, you’re not designing a rocket.’ Even though it’s just an instrument, there’s still so much value in keeping the nuanced details in consideration.”

Designing Gibson guitars is a testament to the intricate artistry and engineering prowess involved in crafting these iconic instruments. Tucker's passion for her work shines through as she navigates the complexities of wood, reverse engineering and the preservation of historical designs. Even on a production line, each Gibson guitar is worked by hand and the design and engineering processes take that into account as they develop each instrument.

Alin Vargatu’s journey in engineering began with his father’s stories about being an army engineer officer, which he found fascinating as a kid. His father told of dangerous work mining bridges and defusing bombs. He was to realize later that what his father loved the most was building things—not destroying them.

In high school, he discovered his passion for metalworking, technical drafting and design. That led him to pursue a degree in robotics and automated production systems and eventually he began his first job, which was related to non-destructive testing in power plants.

“I remember lugging a 7kg ultrasonic detector ten stories above ground to look for fractures in huge pipes or crawling inside cavernous tanks to spray penetrant dyes. Since I hated manual, repetitive work, I designed a little robot that could revolve around these pipes and perform the ultrasonic testing unattended. I used that as the topic for my master’s thesis (MSc in welding and NDT).”

It wasn’t long before Vargatu realized he missed designing products and joined Teknion, a leading office furniture manufacturer. “Teknion was a school for me. Not only did I learn everything I know about working with sheet metal there, but also the importance of design intent, modularity, configurability and… meeting deadlines. I had amazing mentors and cannot say enough great things about them.”

After Teknion, Vargatu spent a few more years designing products for office and store furniture manufacturers before joining Olympic Tool and Die. There he designed tooling, machinery, automation projects, gauges, fixtures and anything else his clients needed.

“At Olympic Tool and Die, we had clients from every industry you could imagine. My mentor, Arnold Santos (the owner of the company), was an incredible engineer and designer and he would go after any job that was available. Every day we had to design something new.”

Vargatu was awarded SOLIDWORKS Reseller AE of the Year in 2020. (Image courtesy of Alin Vargatu.)

Now, Vargatu works at TriMech Solutions, formerly Javelin Technologies, which has enabled him to “partner with the smartest people in the world and witness them creating and improving our world.”

First Introductions to SOLIDWORKS

Vargatu first started using CAD in 1991, and says it was love at first sight. It wasn’t until 1997 when he was able to really start using CAD professionally.

“I started using 3D CAD professionally as part of one of the Teknion divisions. When the company decided to implement a unique 3D CAD software solution for the whole company, I was selected in a team of twelve engineers and designers from various departments to research and recommend which software would be the best for our needs. The next six months were amazing. All the software vendors wanted our business, so we got serious training in Inventor, Mechanical Desktop, IronCAD, Solid Edge, CATIA, Pro/E and SOLIDWORKS. We did a very thorough analysis. It was SOLIDWORKS that checked off every box.”

When he joined Olympic Tool and Die, they made it a condition of his employment that he become a SOLIDWORKS expert. After a couple years, Vargatu considered himself a power-user. When the company received training grants, he took the opportunity to take all the courses offered by their SOLIDWORKS reseller, for there were still a number of tools he needed to learn.

After continuing to take courses and using the tech support line, he became quite familiar with his company’s reseller. That reseller was Javelin Technologies, who eventually employed Vargatu. Since then, he has been a SOLIDWORKS user and evangelist, teaching and promoting the software to engineers and designers worldwide.

The SOLIDWORKS Community

Vargatu credits much of his engineering success to the SOLIDWORKS community and everything that the user-base has to offer. Whether he was leaning on his reseller to find more efficient workflows or collaborating with an organization as a presenter, there is a unity in the SOLIDWORKS community that he’s found invaluable.

 “I took advantage of everything [the community] had to offer,” he said. “I started by asking questions on the SOLIDWORKS Forum and I got perfect answers fast. The next step was brainstorming with the users to find solutions together. Once I became more confident, I started to give back to the community: answers in the forum, articles and videos in various publications, including engineersrule.com, presentations delivered at SOLIDWORKS User Groups meetings, SOLIDWORKS World, 3DEXPERIENCE World and more. I cannot overstate how important the SOLIDWORKS Community has been for the success of my career and for my continuous development as a human being.”

Vargatu shares his power-user skills with a group of user group members. (Image courtesy of Alin Vargatu.)

Thought leaders within these communities are vital to their growth and sustainability. CAD and its associated tools can be used in a number of ways to get the same result. That’s part of being an engineer—not just getting something done, but finding an efficient way to do it.

Vargatu credits his mentors as being a major component to his success. Now, as a certified SOLIDWORKS Champion, he is giving back to the community that helped build his career.

Vargatu with Dassault Systèmes CEO, Bernard Charles, at 3DEXPERIENCE WORLD 2023.

“If I were to pick a single hurdle that might hinder a young engineer, it would be finding good mentors. I was blessed by having excellent mentors throughout my career. With the easy access to vast amounts of information, some people might think that they can find anything they need on the web. That is true, but the great challenge is filtering the irrelevant or even unproductive noise from the good data,” he said.

Vargatu enjoying a canoe ride during a day off from the engineering grind. (Image courtesy of Alin Vargatu.)

Vargatu’s non-professional life is dedicated to his family and an affection for history and reading. This time has also given him an appreciation for time outdoors. Of course, the professional and non-professional worlds can sometimes bleed together, and he quoted what might be one of the best definitions for the broad term of what an engineer is:

“Actually, I don’t think I’ve ever met an engineer before. Are they all like you?”

“Yes,” the man said. “It’s a state of mind more than anything. You can’t help thinking in mechanisms; always in three dimensions and always five stages ahead. It takes a little while to learn.”

From Devices and Desires, K. J. Parker

It’s certain that Vargatu’s priorities on family and community have served him well both personally and professionally.

“One thing is clear,” he said. “You cannot improve your knowledge and proficiency on your own. I have been very lucky to work with an amazing team of professionals at TriMech, to partner with the most intelligent people who are my clients and to have access to the best community of users which is that of SOLIDWORKS.”

From his early years with an engineering father to his current status as a talented presenter and SOLIDWORKS expert, Vargatu’s ability to connect with the community has helped both it and himself grow as an engineer.

Folks outside the world of engineering may not know much about Dassault Systèmes or SOLIDWORKS, but if you’re design-inclined, you know the value of a community built around these tools. No matter how intuitive or straightforward a CAD/CAM/PDM/etc. interface might be, questions will still arise. That’s how Deepak Gupta found himself learning SOLIDWORKS back in the early 2000’s.

“I did a four-year college that was completely mechanical engineering. During the last year, we got just a glimpse of 3D,” Gupta explained. That glimpse was literally just a few minutes of exposure to 3D CAD before being thrust into the workforce.

His first job used AutoCAD and 2D drawings. The VP of the company wanted to present a machine concept to one of their customers, but they wanted more than a 2D drawing. That was Gupta’s first real exposure to 3D—in AutoCAD.

“Things were going fine, but then a friend introduced me to a SOLIDWORKS reseller in my region, telling me that these people do 3D, too.”

The owner of that company went to the same college as Gupta, and he quickly found himself as an application engineer with the organization. From then on, he was learning new things about SOLIDWORKS every day. Through solving customer problems, he learned the ins and outs of the software suite and built skills with the software.

Until one day when a customer presented a particular challenge that he couldn’t solve himself. That’s when he found the forums where he could connect and ask questions.

“I started getting lots of answers from there and then one day I thought, ‘I have some knowledge about SOLIDWORKS now, let's share it back to the community.’ So, I started giving back with answers to problems that people were sharing on the forums,” he says.

In 2011, Gupta found himself being invited to his first SOLIDWORKS WORLD and saw the vast community that had been created around this software. As his expertise became better known, Gupta was approached to work on a project in SOLIDWORKS.

Since then, he’s built a business as a SOLIDWORKS Design Consultant, working with clients on their drawings, details and even automation by making macros or add-ins. He is also a Certified SOLIDWORKS Expert, a SOLIDWORKS blogger and a user group aficionado.

Many of Gupta’s clients are organizations that have a lot of projects rolling at once. When they are unable to fit the work into their queues, they call him. He works as a team member on specific projects and has touched a range of different disciplines including 3D modeling, 2D drawings and animation projects.

Gupta remembers the early days of 3D CAD when many were afraid of adopting the newer technology for fear of breaking their drawings.

“Now, people are doing 3D modeling by touchscreen or with a stylus! You can just open up the software on your cell phone and you can draw a good 3D model. Things have changed drastically in the last 20 years.”

The emergence of CAD in the cloud has really inspired this SOLIDWORKS champion. Gupta touted the fact that having cloud access to CAD provides more liberty and power to the users, especially for someone who travels for business.

Being in India and working with worldwide clients, Gupta knows the potential challenge of accessing assets when you’re in a different time zone. But thanks to the cloud, you can just log in and show your customer, without having to rely on connecting with your team that might be out of the office.

“I personally feel it is giving you much more power than it used to. But looking at how users are taking to it, I still feel it'll take another five to ten years for people to eventually adopt it completely,” he says.

Much like his beginnings with SOLIDWORKS, Gupta feels that there is a growing value in collaboration in CAD. In fact, he believes that in some circumstances, what used to take six months can be squeezed down to even a few days.

“One team member may be sitting in Japan, one may be sitting in America, one may be in Germany and one may be in India. We used to send samples to every team member to test on their end and share the reports but now everyone can look at what is going on through the collaborative software. They can immediately give their input, rather than wait for weeks to get the sample and testing. Fast feedback means a faster time to market.”

Most of us are well aware of how valuable the hive mind can be. Collaboration, whether that’s within CAD or throughout engineering in general, means that we are always finding ways to become more efficient and create better products.

Gupta invites aspiring community members and folks looking for project help to connect with him on LinkedIn.

Stephen Petrock has not only earned a place amongst valuable CAD trainers, but now finds himself helping to teach the best ways to train CAD users.

Petrock started his engineering journey from a young age, as a LEGO aficionado who quickly developed into a kid that simply wanted to figure out how things worked. As you might expect, that led to studying engineering in college and eventually getting an internship with the Department of Defense.

While getting hands-on experience with mechanical engineering over every summer and winter break, he also gave walking tours of Washington, D.C. “I had this day job that was incredibly technical and hands-on—equations, calculations, figuring stuff out, building it, just making stuff right—but, it wasn't enough to pay the bills. So, I gave the walking tours. That was my kind of entrance into public speaking.”

When the contract for the project Petrock had been interning on was coming to an end, he had to start looking for a new job. With his experience in both engineering and public speaking, he wanted to find a profession where he could combine both.

That’s when his work at a SOLIDWORKS partner started. “I went from being a hands-on engineer into full-time learning SOLIDWORKS,” he says.

His previous experience had been with a different CAD software, so he began learning SOLIDWORKS and getting all the certifications. That quickly transitioned into not only giving software demos and presentations, but he also began creating marketing content and educational collateral.

Petrock films a SOLIDWORKS Simulation video presentation while in Peru. (Image courtesy of Stephen Petrock.)

Petrock explained that creating the needed educational content isn’t always straightforward. We live in the age of Google, so you can look anything up and there is most likely some sort of information out there. The difference with learning something like CAD is that you might know the function but without knowing the software, you might not know how to even ask for what you need.

“You don't need to know everything, but you need to know how to figure it out,” he says. One of the first times he realized this had to do with an icon on top of his mouse. He didn’t know what it was and in turn, didn’t know how to look it up. “I didn't know how to describe it to someone over the phone or how to type it into Google. How do I look this up? You don't even know what to search for to get the answer to the question. Your question is, ‘What is this thing?’ Well, you have to first learn how to describe the thing. Understanding that there is a process, there are resources out there, but just having that right mindset and figuring it out is a huge part of creating content in this space.”

While Petrock isn’t fresh out of college anymore, he still has insight with younger emerging engineers, and he’s seen how things have changed since the late 2000’s and early 2010’s.

“There's been a transition lately with the additive manufacturing space, that I think what used to be problems are no longer problems, which is really cool. What used to be a problem was that a more seasoned or salty machinist would say, ‘These engineers always make stuff that I can't manufacture. I can't make this.’ Well with additive, we can make whatever you want. I think what's really good is the younger people, they're not as stubborn or set in their ways.”

The mindset that Petrock sees in younger engineers can be a double-edged sword, as he’s seen in his time working with SOLIDWORKS users. The barrier of entry has been lowered (significantly) for CAD, which means more users—many of which have no engineering or manufacturing experience at all.

CAD is highly technical, and these days its users can be anyone from a PhD working on a research project, DIYers who are in their garage tinkering, or a professional engineer that doesn’t care about all the features because they just want to get the job done. Developing a way for these various groups to learn CAD can be a major hurdle, as they all learn differently and require different skillsets. Petrock has worked to make content and presentations that are relevant for everybody in the CAD space.

“I think [the engineering community] is poised for good future growth in terms of agility and a mindset that is going to help enable that. The people that get it are the ones that aren't scared of breaking it. They know they can click around and just figure it out.”

These days, Petrock finds himself in Miami, Florida as he works with 2Win! helping leading technology organizations deliver better demos and presentations of their products. Beyond engineering, he spends time with his wife and their dog. His wife’s family is from Peru, so much of his leisure time is spent learning Spanish and enjoying Peruvian culinary experiences.

“Before I met my wife, I didn't know anything about Peru, and now I know that they make the best food. It's amazing, and I definitely recommend everyone trying to find a Peruvian restaurant.”

From mechanical engineering grad to teaching technology companies the best ways to demo their products, Petrock foresees electronics organizations—specifically, electro-mechanical systems—and the adjacent markets being the biggest places of engineering growth. That means potentially new features in CAD, and more opportunities for every engineer to learn more about their craft.

Then there are engineers like Elise Moss. She literally wrote the book on CAD… well, one of the books on CAD.

Her introduction to the world of engineering came early with a grandfather who was a civil engineer for the city of Chicago, designing their sewer system. Her father was also an engineer, but his specialty was the world of metallurgy for the aeronautics industry. He specified the metals that were used on the Apollo, Mars and Gemini missions.

“When I was a little kid, he used to take me into mission control. The historical significance was kind of lost on me then, but my dad likes to brag that I was one of the first human beings to see Mars,” Moss shares.

Obviously, engineering runs in her family, so it wasn’t a surprise that Moss decided to go into the practice herself. Initially, she considered entering the world of civil engineering, but she was concerned that the gender barriers that existed at the time would inhibit her ability to succeed. After scoring “off the charts” in spatial analysis and being able to visualize in 3D (remember, this is pre-CAD) she decided to pursue mechanical engineering.

With an engineering degree in hand, Moss got her first job designing equipment for core samplers in mining operations. This work was done on paper on big drafting boards—the old-school engineering way. While the concept of operating with CAD in the cloud was still decades away, Moss saw firsthand why that concept holds water.

“One of the first projects I worked on was designing the control panel for one of these analyzers. We designed all the software to use Imperial units, but the customer was in the UK and that  wasn’t caught until we shipped it,” Moss says. Cloud communication in CAD has revolutionized the challenge of catching such mistakes. Minor challenges like forgetting to spec a hole size before sending a drawing to a fabricator and correcting the missing measurement without having to dig through files and iterative paperwork, are much easier. “This is the kind of stuff that doesn’t really happen today, because we can quickly and easily pull a drawing up on the computer.”

In 1982, Moss recalls, salesmen started to show up looking to sell a new software called AutoCAD. “They were trying to sell AutoCAD to engineering departments, but the engineering managers didn't even want to talk to them. The drafters didn't want to talk to them. Back then, if you worked on a computer, you were either a secretary or an accountant.”

The stigma of doing design on a computer kept a number of departments from even considering the new tool. Moss recalls that at the time many drafters felt as though computers were beneath them. Drafters were considered technical artists who had really refined the craft of drawing and designing on paper. They assumed that computers were beneath them. They also assumed that drafting on a computer would lead to a cut in pay.

As they often are, the salesperson was relentless, and eventually found a way into the company through the finance department. After explaining how much money the organization could save by using CAD instead of cutting-and-pasting iterations and spending time revising drawings, they were sold.

While there was resistance within the engineering department, Moss—the most junior drafter—saw a potential opportunity.

“I was not particularly good at drafting. I was good at visualizing, sure, but I wasn't good at actually drawing… I was a dirty drafter. I tended to have to erase all over, and I smudged drawings all the time. So, when they brought in AutoCAD, they said somebody in the department had to learn it. And everybody turned around and said ‘we're not doing it. We're not taking a demotion’ and I was like, ‘I'll do it.’”

Eventually, Moss became the CAD manager for the company and was in charge of training everybody in the department, until the company was sold and moved to a different state. Not wanting to move, she found a new job in the ramping-up economy of Silicon Valley in the late 80’s.

In the late 90’s, Moss found herself working with Dean Villegas, who founded one of the first AutoCAD user groups in the country, SVAPU. The user group got so big that they were renting out movie theaters for meetings and events,  and these quickly morphed into user group conferences like 3D EXPERIENCE WORLD and Autodesk University. She recalls that one event in the mid-90’s was attended by over 100,000 group members.

Eventually Villegas decided to retire from the user group life and Moss took over as president until the user group shifted from a user focus and became more corporate -run, as most user groups and events are these days.

When the dot com crash rocked Silicon Valley, Moss found herself shifting to a new employment opportunity in education. As an educator, she taught AutoCAD, SOLIDWORKS and, surprisingly enough given her mechanical engineering background, Revit. Moss was so impressed by Revit software, she called some of her connections at Autodesk and recommended they buy the company—which Autodesk did.

When it came to teaching, Moss was not able to find a textbook to her liking. So, she wrote her own. As she was teaching AutoCAD, she developed the book for her students. At the time, she just used the university printing services to print her book and sell it in the bookstore for her classes. But there was an issue.

“The book was sold for whatever the cost of printing the copies. They only printed enough for my students. This was common practice. On the second day of class one semester, I ask the students if they’ve picked up their textbooks. And they tell me that the bookstore had sold out.”

She ordered enough copies from the university printer for her class but the bookstore didn’t have any more copies. Upon investigation, the bookstore manager explained that people were coming in off the street to buy her book. That’s when Moss started looking for a publisher and found SDC Publications.

To this day, the book is still published by SDC. “My book is still one of their best sellers.” A quick search for Elise Moss on Amazon finds many books under her name.

Eventually, Silicon Valley recovered and Moss went back to working with various startups and eventually as a contractor for Google. With her broad knowledge of CAD, including SOLIDWORKS, Creo, Revit and AutoCAD, she helped the Silicon Valley behemoth design data centers, combining designs that were developed in all four software programs into a cohesive, interpretable design, Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit. During lockdown, Google wasn’t building data centers, so she and her husband decided to hit the road. But this was no ordinary road trip.

Veteran writer and rider, Elise Moss on Mercy (short for Mercutio) a 17-year-old Tennessee Walker.

In the early 2000’s, Moss’ publisher gifted Moss some time at a dude ranch (think City Slickers). Wanting to get more out of the ranch experience, Moss and her husband took horse riding lessons. They enjoyed the ranch so much that they got horses of their own. As you read this, they are traveling the U.S. and trail riding every state in the lower 48.

But Google wants her back, so they will be headed back to California soon so she can get started on the next project. Currently in Florida for the winter, their journey west will start when the temperature gets higher. They have seen 46 of the lower 48 states and plan to hit the last two (West Virginia and Minnesota) on the way back.

From junior drafter to CAD guru, Moss has run the gamut of the world of engineering. When asked what she found most interesting in the broad spectrum of opportunities that engineering offers, she says, “You know, I have never met an engineer who is happy with whatever he was shown.” You can always figure out a way to make it better, and as engineers, that’s what we do.”

Engineering.com first covered Zuyderduyn’s program when his tutorial for designing a Jumbo 747 plane was released. While the tutorial doesn’t go into all the intricate details of the design—things like electrical systems, fasteners, engine design—it does explore aesthetically creating the model and walks through both the basics of design and helps establish valuable design habits that can benefit both young and old engineers.

The LearnSOLIDWORKS.com tutorials cover a number of different designs, including one to model the Tesla Roadster which walks through designing the gorgeous curves of this vehicle.

One of the three free Tesla tutorials covers the roof while another covers the side of the vehicle, going into detail about adding planes, building the wheel trim with arcs and splines, and starting to bring out the details that make this model look like a Tesla Roadster.

First Steps: The Roof

There are a number of individual eBooks that walk through every component of modeling this vehicle, so you can work off of your previous iteration or you can download a SOLIDWORKS starting file to jump right in. This tutorial was created by Romain Ginestou, a contributor to LearnSOLIDWORKS.com, and he begins the lesson with some of the basics.

The roof is a great starting point for modeling a vehicle because it encompasses a lot of design without being overly complex. The curved profiles span a large portion of the vehicle, giving us a f baseline for the rest of the vehicle.

Ginestou’s tutorial creates the roof as a half that will be mirrored, which simplifies the process. There are four profiles needed to build the roof, which are light blue in this graphic.

Using the SOLIDWORKS starting file, select the right plane and start a new sketch.

In the Sketch ribbon, select the Spline tool and position three points, using the print as a reference.

Add global construction lines by going to the Centerline tool in the Sketch ribbon. Add vertical Construction Lines from each point that was used to define the spline down to the top plane. These lines will not register as profiles in SOLIDWORKS, but they can be used as a reference for dimension during the design process.

Use the Smart Dimension tool to set a specific distance between the front plane and the construction line closest to the front of the vehicle. Set the distance to 1,200 mm. With the same tool, click the frontmost construction line and enter 815 mm.

Now, the spline’s point has been fixed horizontally and vertically. When the construction line and the spline’s point turn black, it’s a visual notification that these elements are completely constrained—they have no degrees of freedom left.

Repeat the process for the other two spline points and their associated construction lines, as demonstrated in this dimensional sketch.

At this point, clicking on the spline will make the Spline Handles appear. These handles allow for adjustment of the curve on the spline, so we can create that sports car top line.

Using the Smart Dimension tool, the tutorial walks through the process of creating specific dimensions and angles on the roof, as well as fully constraining elements to make the rest of the design process easier.

With the use of projected curves and more construction lines, the tutorial combines a few sketches to create the curves, bezels and surfaces of the sports car roof. The tutorial is well-worth a look, but let’s pivot to a different component to see what the process looks like.

Pivot to the Fenders

The free tutorial goes much further in-depth on the details of completing the roof of a Tesla model, but let’s switch to an even more interesting element of the vehicle: the fenders. Using mostly the Extruded Surface and Trim Surface tools, the tutorial walks through modeling up the edges of the fender on the Tesla Roadster.

To start off, add two planes that pass through both wheels’ axes that are parallel to the front plane of the vehicle. These will help keep placement of the wheels centered and keep the arc of the fender tight to the wheel itself, for that sports car look.

In the Features ribbon, go to Reference Geometry and click Plane. Select the front plane as reference, enter a distance of 920 mm and check the Flip Offset box.

Repeat those steps to create another plane 3,950 mm away from the front plane, and you should have something like this:

Those extra reference planes are going to give you solid points to anchor the rest of the design.

Adding the “Sports Car” Lines

The next steps will help the vehicle start to take shape, and the curves that make the Tesla Roadster a sports car will start to emerge.

Starting a new sketch after clicking on the front plane, insert a simple Spline that covers the wheel on the side of the car and make its lower endpoint coincident with the top plane.

Insert a construction line that travels from the spline’s upper end to the right plane horizontally, to help dimension the sketch. Then using the Smart Dimension tool, define the distances of the horizontal end points with respect to the right plane, and set the height of the upper end point to 830 mm.

Make the splines upper handle vertical, and using the Smart Dimension tool again, set the handle’s weight and a 75° angle between the top plane and the spline’s lower handle. Then close the sketch.

By selecting the last sketch in the Features Manager, you can click Insert > Surface > Extrude, and extrude the sketch 1,500 mm toward the back of the car. A little tip: if you click on the arrows next to the Blind parameter, you can reverse the extrusion direction.

Once extruded, this surface is too large for the purposes of this design, so cutting this surface according to the fender arch is next. Using the Wireframe view mode simplifies this process, since only the surface’s edges are displayed, and you can better see the blueprint beneath.

The tutorial goes further in-depth on using splines, equal curvature, and offset entities to flesh out the sexy curves of a Tesla Roadster, including the tricky details of taking the print from 2D to 3D.

Watch this video where LearnSOLIDWORKS speeds through the process of modeling this entire vehicle—and you can slow it to half or quarter speed if you want to model along.

The entire tutorial for modeling a Tesla Roadster covers 20 eBooks, with each eBook covering a section of the car.

To learn more about SOLISWORKS, check out the eBook SOLIDWORKS 2022 Enhancements to Streamline and Accelerate Your Entire Product Development Process.

Jan-Willem Zuyderduyn operates LearnSOLIDWORKS.com where he says you can “become a SOLIDWORKS pro in days, not years.”

Rather than teach with boring machine components or slow-paced builds, he takes the more interesting route and provides a free tutorial on designing components for an Aston Martin ONE-77.

Key Takeaways

Zuyderduyn first came to the attention of the Engineering.com community when he modeled an entire Boeing 747 as an assembly of 677 solids. While the final product was not modeled down to all of the mechanical, electrical and otherwise functional components, it is a true-to-life aesthetic version of the plane, and a version that can be further improved in Keyshot and other renderers.

Now Romain Ginestou, a contributor at LearnSOLIDWORKS.com, has taken to teaching us how to model a high-end sportscar. This tutorial provides a SOLIDWORKS starting file to help you get the baseline of the design but then it jumps right into building some of the coolest elements of the car.

Focusing on splines while creating the model of the car, the tutorial walks through every step of basic vehicle elements—except they aren’t basic at all. It’s an Aston Martin.

Getting Started: Top Line of the ONE-77

Ginestou starts the tutorial with a projected curve and proceeds step by step through its creation. Using the Spline tool, we create the topline of the vehicle. Making use of the Smart Dimension tool, we set the distance between the endpoint of the spline and a plane.

The horizontal dimensions are defined in relation to the front plate and the vertical dimensions are in relation to the top plane.

Adding two construction lines from the endpoints of the curve up to the top plane will later allow for easier conversion from a skeletal drawing to a model. Construction lines can also really help with measuring elements of your sketch.

To get a feel for how the spline interacts, click the spline and move the handles. At this point, you can add weight to the handles by using the Smart Dimension tool. It’s also possible to set the angle of the handles by clicking on them and then clicking on a line or plane.

That’s the first sketch.

More In-Depth Design

The rest of the tutorial delves into a number of details, including using the Features Manager, modeling the fenders and dimensioning components in relation to the previous sketches.

One useful tool covered is the use of Trim Entities in the Sketch ribbon. When designing the fenders over the front driver’s side wheel, you’ll create a sketch of a circle. Using the Trim Entities tool, hold the mouse button down while moving around. When the cursor’s trajectory intersects with a sketch entity, it gets trimmed.

We use this tool to create the arc of the fender in true artsy Aston Martin fashion.

To finish off the arc of the fender, we create splines and make them tangent to the remainder of the circle. This is done by first creating the splines, selecting one curve and the circle while holding the Ctrl key. Then, in the pop-up choose Curvature relation.

The tutorial walks through using Splines, the Smart Dimension tool and the Trim tool to finish off the fender from all angles. The rear fender is similar but isn’t quite as symmetrical from the side, which leads to a number of learning opportunities with the Trim and Offset tools, as well as playing with interesting angles.

The trim along the bottom of the ONE-77 that connects the two fenders is complex. Ginestou makes note of using an array of reference pictures in order to create the proper angles and design elements.

As with the other elements of this design, it starts with creating a spline. Dimensioning the spline by fixing the weight and angle of each handle creates the starting shape of the connecting trim.

Switching to the top plane, another spline is used to create the curve. Then use Insert > Curve > Projected…, and select the last two sketches to create a projected curve.

A few more tweaks and splines, and we add the Boundary Surface by going through Insert > Surface > Boundary Surface…, and suddenly the vehicle starts to take some shape.

At the end of the tutorial, we’re left with some of the first sexy curves of an Aston Martin ONE-77: the top line and the lower fender areas.

The full tutorial is available at LearnSOLIDWORKS.com but you can see the whole process, including this tutorial and others, in the video below.

Learn more about SOLIDWORKS with the eBook SOLIDWORKS 2022 Enhancements to Streamline and Accelerate Your Entire Product Development Process.

Design firm Dimensional Innovations created the outdoor lettering for SoFi Stadium, home of the L.A. Rams football team. (Picture courtesy of TheRams.com)

Designing Experiences

Dimensional Innovations is a company that defines itself as an organization that builds experiences. While that immediately sounds like a nondescript, Silicon Valley buzzword, it is wholly accurate. Jason Cornett, who is the engineering manager at DI, said, “We're an experience design, build and technology firm, but I mean, really we design, build and innovate. We kind of do it all, and we do it all in-house.”

Unlike a machine tool building company or an organization that creates consumer products, DI has to approach engineering differently. They are responsible for building an experience for visitors to a variety of facilities. Whether that involves creating a more comfortable (and playable) environment for kids at a children’s hospital or developing the signage and entryway at a major stadium, their expertise is spread across an array, arguably all, disciplines of engineering.

“It is different than a typical engineering job,” Cornett said. “The fun thing about DI is that we get to talk to our design team, we get to talk to our fabrication team. Rather than just sitting in SOLIDWORKS designing, we see the whole design process from A to Z. We’re always building something unique. Even during an install, we get a talk and need to come up with solutions on the fly. It is always a collaboration, and figuring things out.”

While DI develops experiences at sports stadiums, corporate headquarters and museums, the idea of designing an experience can really be recognized through their work with children’s hospitals.

“We’ve designed experiences to help make those hospital environments more comfortable.” said Weston Owen, PR and Social Media Strategist at DI. “That space can be a scary and intimidating experience for an adult, let alone a child. So, we work to implement technology to make them feel at ease and in control. For example, at Connecticut Children's Medical Center a couple of years back, we created this incredible activation called ‘The Wilderverse.’”

Patients at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center can interact with an DI-designed experience that flows throughout the infusion room.

“You have kids that are going in and getting shots, probably pretty scared with what they're dealing with, and they are immersed in ‘The Wilderverse.’ There are all these beautifully curved LED screens that they can interact with. Basically, they create an avatar on their phone. They customize it and they have complete control over it. As they're sitting there getting their shots and all of these LEDs are out in the middle of the room, their avatar can navigate this vast world that we created with waterfalls and forest. To build community, other kids are creating those avatars as well, so they are interacting with each other, exploring and growing. At the end of the day, we have had so many kids that say, they did not want to go home from the infusion center because they were so engrossed,” said Owen.

Design Process for an Experience

Due to the nature of their work, every project that DI works on has a different timeline and process. Developing a moving architectural showpiece in a stadium is different from building an interactive software environment for children, but DI has the resources to do both.

In fact, most of DI’s works are extremely refined prototypes—they rarely have a project that requires mass production. Instead, they need to work in collaboration with their fabrication (manufacturing) team to not only create something that will work upon delivery, but which will also last over time.

According to Cornett, communication is key to keeping the many moving pieces of the large one-off projects on track. “Our teams are always collaborating, always communicating with each other. If something won't work, then we're always going back to the drawing board to make sure that it's going to fit that profile of what the clients look for.”

With an organization of around 270 people—from design and engineering teams to fabrication and install teams—this collaboration is apparent. Cornett admits that there are occasional “pixie dust moments” where a client or their design team asks for an engineering feat that just isn’t possible…at least within a given budget or time restraint. So, just like any other engineering firm, DI has to navigate the shifting trifecta of cost-time-quality.

Because of their combination of unique challenges designing large, one-off products and navigating the typical challenges of engineering, DI focuses on that collaborative environment.

“Really, it starts off with our design team and, you know, they're designers at heart so they have creative sessions with the client to talk about what they are imagining. Sometimes our engineering team will get brought in to discuss limitations like sheet size on materials for instance, or transportation size. After that process has wrapped up, engineering gets the image or concept, and we tear it apart. It’s just a shell at that point. Like, this is what the client wants, this is their overall goal, so we pretty much had the freedom to work inside of that to make it buildable. We also work closely with the fabrication team so we can actually get the thing built,” Cornett said.

DI’s fabrication team works to make the SoFi Stadium design come to life, before shipping it off to Los Angeles for installation. (Image courtesy of Dimensional Innovations.)

Even details around delivery or installation of their projects can be a challenge and require engineering consideration. For instance, DI was responsible for designing, developing, and installing the logo on the outside of the SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles. Developing massive lettering was straightforward. The challenges came when we had to move the finished product from DI headquarters in Kansas City and mount the letters several stories in the air.

Beyond the logistics and installation challenges is that the products that DI is creating are refined (extremely refined) prototypes—ones that absolutely haveto work. While it’s an expensive challenge if an average engineering project has failures or premature wear, once a DI project is installed, there are no longer opportunities for further iterations. It has to work the first time.

“That's the beauty of SOLIDWORKS,” Cornett explained. “Doing everything in 3D space, and really fully engineering these things before they're released, we can see what's going to fit and what's not going to fit. We have our set standards and procedures that we built up over time to make sure that our materials go together, such as counting for things like acrylic always being undersized and whatnot. The 3D modeling is a lifesaver in that aspect.”

He explained that their modeling needs are incredibly complex, but the precision factors are essential. Because their delivered products are custom and unique every time, it’s vital to have sizing and fitment specifications be spot on.

“I think of our team as solvers,” Cornett continued. “We really are just modeling pieces and parts, building the thing inside of SOLIDWORKS, but the most useful feature we use is context modeling. So, we make sure all our parts and features are linked together so that if there is a change, everything changes with it. Like, say we find out a wall changed size during construction. We can go in there and click a couple numbers, change the wall and our whole model essentially fixes itself—and we know it’s correct. We can go straight into manufacturing at that point, you know, hit print, with confidence.”

SOLIDWORKS employees joined together on a worldwide, multi-disciplinary collaboration to design a digital space station, aptly named “The Grand Challenge.” Then, DI created a real-world scale model of the digital design. (Image courtesy of Dimensional Innovations.)

The resources needed to design experiences the way DI does are extremely broad-based with a lot of grey in cross-disciplinary engineering, but both Cornett and Owen emphasized their team’s ability to collaborate both internally and with clients as essential. While they aren’t exactly an engineering firm or a manufacturing business, their builds reflect both the imagination of design and the practicality of traditional engineering.

Learn more about SOLIDWORKS in the whitepaper Gain Competitive Advantage with Product Data Management.

To make things, engineers use tools—and of course, those tools need to be engineered as well. Kreg Tool Company has been engineering tools for woodworkers since 1989, developing jigs, guides, templates and even workspaces. Kreg Tool is best known for their pocket-hole jig system, which was first patented in 1990, but that doesn’t mean that the company stopped inventing.

Kreg Tool’s pocket-hole jig system in action. (Picture courtesy of Kreg Tool Company.)

Same Job, New Tools

“In February, we launched a whole new series of pocket-hole joinery products, as well as three new cutting products,” explained Mark McClellan, Director of Product Engineering at Kreg Tool. “Our goal with the refreshing of products was to take a deep look at user needs and address pain points in the world of pocket-hole joinery. We really started from scratch, so the products that you’ll see out on the market now are pretty radically different than what we’ve had in the market for a decade or more.”

While engineers often find themselves actively avoiding over-engineering their projects and keeping a cautious eye on feature-creep, it is also important to recognize the need for an update. The team of engineers at Kreg was well aware of their potential to reinvent the wheel—a wheel that they invented in the first place. They saw pain points for their customers and sought to fix them.

“For these particular products, there was an immense amount of product market research that was done with some really good quantitative data to define what people struggled with and what people liked,” McClellan continued. “As we started to develop what the new products needed to do, we used data that we had pulled from real customers to identify the critical aspects and features to focus on.”

The traditional Kreg Jig is well known, so the team didn’t want to simply update their legacy product.

“Our pocket-hole jigs have been around for a long time, and we’re the innovators in that space,” said Derek Steelman, Product Development Engineering Manager at Kreg Tool.

“Pocket-holes have been around for a long while, but Kreg popularized the pocket-hole jig. We’re the benchmark that everyone is chasing down. When you’re the benchmark, after a while people start to catch up to you and you have to go out there and push those boundaries. So, we stepped back and asked, ‘How can we be innovative?’ Instead of just refreshing an old product, how do we go big and put ourselves ahead of the market? There was a lot of research into how people use these jigs.”

(Image courtesy of Kreg Tool Company.)

That market research and the commitment to developing a better version of a prominent product led to the new 520PRO and 720PRO Pocket-Hole Jig systems, but not without some serious product development.

Designing Tools from Napkin Sketch to Realized Product

The Kreg engineering team took the redesign of their classic product to heart. While a quick rebrand would have refreshed the tool and sold a few more units a year, the engineering team was looking to develop a truly updated version of an industry standard.

“Really, the beginning of our design process starts with, ‘What does the consumer need?’ From that, we develop multiple solutions for solving that problem out in the market,” McClellan said. Using research gathered from a broad-reaching number of sources—from message boards and social media to focus groups and influencers—the Kreg team works to discover challenges and develop solutions.

Then they enter the concept stage. This is where the engineers throw whatever ideas they can at the wall to see what sticks. “With the joinery products, as an example, we have boxes of Kreg jigs that did not and will not go to market,” McClellan continued. “We have 15 or 20 alternative pocket-hole jigs that we evaluated along the way… they’re all partially developed. We develop them in SOLIDWORKS and then we use 3D printers and other equipment to manufacture prototypes. Then we use them. Sometimes we actually put them in the hands of consumers and ask what they think.”

(Image courtesy of Kreg Tool Company.)

They use both FDM and SLR 3D printers to develop prototypes, as well as machining equipment such as a mill, lathe and small water jet. According to McClellan, their basic machine shop allows the team to produce 80-90 percent of their prototypes in-house. For the rest, they use prototyping services for things such as tooling up components that might eventually need to be molded. Their prototyping lab has a developed submission system that allows their engineers to submit designs and often have parts ready the next day. “It really allows for a rapid, iterative process to try and get the concepts out there and tested quickly,” McClellan said.

Steelman explained, “Some of the ways we develop our market research and are able to use feedback from customers is thanks to the rapid prototyping capabilities like 3D printing. We have much faster, much lower-cost prototyping options than we used to have in the past. Part of our innovative nature is that we want to solve problems for the customer, and so we are always looking for ways to get and use that information from users. Some of these rapid prototyping options really give us that ability to get it in front of users and learn a lot in these early stages before we go into further development. Both quantitative stuff like accuracy, but also more subtle qualitative stuff like ergonomics and usability.”

(Image courtesy of Kreg Tool Company.)

According to the team, those qualitative metrics are key to keeping Kreg on the cutting edge of their market. Considering industrial design early in the development process allows the engineers to design around these key elements of their products.

“The new jigs are a great example of applying industrial design for useability,” McClellan said. “If you look through Kreg’s history of our pocket-hole jigs, you can see where useability and ergonomic leaps have been made since our founder started the company. In the past three or four years, it’s been quite important to bring in that industrial design concept much sooner and really take those concepts into account. You can definitely see how we’ve placed handles and the sizes and shapes of touch points to make the product easier and more intuitive to use.”

McClellan continued, “At the beginning of this whole concept process, we diverge a bit, in terms of how we solve the problem. In doing that, we find different pros and cons of those concepts and we start to converge on a single concept that we want to finish the development on. That convergence then becomes a balancing act of meeting the consumer needs with cost and schedule needs.”

How to Not Reinvent the Wheel

The Kreg engineers see their team as innovators and are dedicated to simply making better tools for woodworkers. When it came to their legacy product, the pocket-hole jig, they saw competitors catching up with their previous innovation.

“We’re always looking ahead,” said Steelman. “To be honest, the conversation with the new pocket-hole jigs before we started was, ‘Do we really need to do this?’ There was definitely rising competition in the space, and there was a consensus that this wasn’t just a redesign for the sake of redesigning a product. We knew that we needed to do something meaningful here.”

Steelman explains how many employees in the Kreg organization use SOLIDWORKS to develop and move through the engineering process; but for obvious reasons, the heaviest users are the design engineers. “They’re doing solid and surface modeling, as well as FEA analysis where we feel it’s necessary. But we also use it in our quality and production areas to design fixtures for assembly and pack out on products. We also use the plastic simulation for mold flows, gate locations and ejectors. Obviously, we utilize some of our toolmakers for insight on those things, but the simulation gives us good opportunities to analyze and optimize our part designs before we go into production.”

(Image courtesy of Kreg Tool Company.)

While the engineers use SOLIDWORKS for obvious reasons, Kreg also sees the software as an effective communication tool. Shelby Strempke, Senior Product Development Engineer at Kreg, explained, “It’s a tool. Just like a mechanic uses a wrench and a carpenter uses a hammer, SOLIDWORKS is our main tool. We use it as a communication tool with many people in the company to help bring our ideas to life. It’s a visual tool. It’s easier to work cross-functionally with different individuals in the organization if you have a visual concept. Otherwise, you’re verbalizing ideas or sketching concepts by hand. When you can just share a model, it makes it much easier to navigate.”

Even when working on the new design of an old product, much of the team’s product development effort is spent trying to maintain a cost target that allows them to sell their product to consumers at a reasonable price. Leveraging a system like SOLIDWORKS throughout the organization allows them to keep track of designs and simulations, but also generating BOMs and rapidly developing cost-estimates for concept-stage products.

Steelman explained that one of the biggest challenges at Kreg is translating their early ideas into concepts that they can then quantify data from consumers. That’s why this part of the process was so vital to the new pocket-hole jigs. “It’s a very fluid time of the development process and that can be a challenge,” he said.

While the team wouldn’t divulge their timeline for developing the newest jig products, McClellan explained, “Timelines vary for going from concept to delivered product. When you talk about the concept phase, that could last anywhere from four weeks to 12 months. Depending on the complexity of the problem and the market need, we may allow ourselves more time so we can come up with a more innovative solution. We spend a good amount of time in that diverging phase before we converge on a more focused design.”

They wanted to be sure that there was reason to start redesigning their legacy product, and they found it. To any user of their previous jig systems, it’s obvious that they have really taken ergonomics and usability into consideration.

(Image courtesy of Kreg Tool Company.)

Innovating with Customers in Mind

Engineers that design consumer products understand the challenges that come with ever-changing public opinion. Kreg saw the needs of the customers boiling up and growing competition challenging their long-standing designs, so they took to innovating.

“Ultimately, we do everything possible to ensure that the product we’re producing is going to meet the customer expectations. It’s not until the day that it reaches the masses that we really know for sure that we’ve hit the mark, but that's why we gather all the consumer data and conduct the testing that we do,” McClellan said.

What an engineer develops, what a customer needs and what actually gets produced can often differ wildly, but Kreg has made an effort to cultivate an innovative culture that focuses on their users: woodworkers.

“As I’m working through designs I’m always thinking about the consumer,” Strempke said. “I’m thinking about ways to make the design more intuitive and not intimidating to the user. I’m also always thinking about cost. We want to make products that are affordable to the masses. As engineers, we can design almost any product given ample time, infinite cost and budget, but the cost can quickly skyrocket and become out of reach for the typical consumer.”

Of course, most of the employees are woodworkers themselves, so there is often little concern of getting myopic or finding new projects. The key that this organization has discovered is to listen to their users first, then do relentless research and develop products from there.

To learn more about SOLIDWORKS, check out the whitepaper Gain Competitive Advantage with Product Data Management.

The stroke left Babb in a wheelchair and with only limited use of one hand. Mountain trails and ski slopes are generally not wheelchair accessible. In fact, he quickly realized that his access to the outdoors was limited less by his body and more by his rigid wheelchair.

“I had this need to be back out on the trail after my stroke, and I knew it was going to have to be something different,” Babb explains. He began to explore the world of off-road wheelchair¹, but he quickly found that the equipment required a person to have arm strength. With limited use in only one hand, none of the off-road wheelchairs on the market would cut it.

“I just started experimenting with a friend of mine, Dale Neubauer, who is a helicopter mechanic. He helped me create some parts for my existing chair to go off-road, and I started to realize what was possible. After that, it just evolved… one thing led to another,” Babb says.

Building a Wheelchair from Scratch

Babb’s first iteration of the AdvenChair was a modified version of a wheelchair. Adding beefier tires, a detachable front wheel, handbrakes on the handlebar and a harness made it so he could truly take to the trail with the help of a team to propel the chair.

In fact, they decided to take on the Grand Canyon. According to the AdvenChair team, “After bumping and grinding over countless water barriers on the Bright Angel Trail, the chair succumbed to a broken axle less than two miles down.”

The team managed to get Babb back to the rim, but it was apparent that a modified wheelchair just wasn’t going to be enough. “That failure led us to look at doing a chair that was going to meet our needs. If we hadn’t broken down, we might still be on the track of modifying an existing wheelchair, rather than creating something from scratch. That’s when Jack Arnold came into the picture,” Babb says.

With a background that started as a machinist and progressed to manufacturing engineering and eventually product development engineering, Arnold jumped on the opportunity to put his skills to good use.

“We were looking to design an off-road wheelchair from scratch, based on using mountain bike parts instead of wheelchair parts,” Arnold explains. “Wheelchair parts are generally more expensive because of the medical tag that goes with them, and they aren’t necessarily very robust. Mountain bike parts, on the other hand, are very robust and readily available. So, it was really an intriguing project.”

His work started at the heart of the whole system: the frame. Arnold found a good balance between rigidity and weight with a tubular aluminum design. It was similar to bicycle frames, so he wouldn’t have to start completely from scratch.

“I went out on GrabCAD and found a pretty good complete mountain bike assembly, available for free. I downloaded that, and used a lot of the parts from that model—the wheels, the disk brakes, the calipers, handlebars… I started borrowing parts from it, and that jump-started the design process.” [Ed. Note: model used was Freeride MTB, submitted by Joris Deschamps]

Because their design was meant for folks riding in a wheelchair, Arnold wanted to make sure the design would hold up to the stresses of both a rider and the environment.

Simulation shows maximum deflection with a 250 lb rider and a factor of three to account for dynamic loads and provide a factor of safety.

“Before I met up with the rest of the team to present my models, I wanted to do some stress testing on the frame. So, I ran some FEA simulations in SOLIDWORKS. Assuming a rider weight of 250 lbs and a factor of three to account for dynamic loads and still provide a factor of safety, I used a 750 lbs static load for the structural analysis. After a couple of tweaks, I got it to where it looked like we could make it work,” Arnold says.

With the CAD on a projector, Arnold went through the design, piece by piece, and got feedback from Babb and the rest of the team. Through several iterations, they have changed a number of things from the original GrabCAD components. For some of the off-the-shelf components, Arnold and Babb established a partnership with SRAM, a bicycle component company. “They were able to provide us with 3D CAD files of a couple of the components that we didn’t have. So, we tried to standardize our design to use SRAM components as much as possible because they’re helping us and they are very durable components,” Arnold says.

Designing for Ruggedness and Accessibility

When Arnold was building out his design in SOLIDWORKS, he took a number of factors into consideration, including a need to make the AdvenChair both rugged and light. With his background in mechanical engineering spawning from work as a machinist, Arnold knew that how the chair was made would make a difference. “I went in thinking about manufacturing,” he says. “I went in knowing what tube radius we should use, and what machining processes would be needed for the parts we were making. I kept all of our machined components simple enough for three-axis machining.”

Beyond just considering the manufacturing processes, Arnold used lots of finite element analysis (FEA) to test the design before they ever took to making physical prototypes. AdvenChair is even part of a startup program with Ansys. “With Ansys Discovery, I noticed that I was able to solve finite element analysis studies almost instantaneously while in the ‘Explore’ mode,” Arnold says.

Arnold explains that he has been a SOLIDWORKS user since 1998, so he is quite committed to the CAD program as he knows all the ins and outs by now. “Also, for producing all of the manufacturing documentation, all of the black line drawings… SOLIDWORKS works really well.” While Arnold uses the FEA in SOLIDWORKS, he is also becoming a big fan of Ansys Discovery to do more and more of his analysis work. "I used Ansys Discovery to compare the structural analysis results of the frame to the same studies I had run in SOLIDWORKS Simulation with the same exact boundary conditions… It was like having a third-party peer review of our initial stress analysis."

He also used a more cutting-edge element of the Ansys program: generative design. To experiment, Arnold took one of the axle dropouts and ran it through the generative process. "You apply loads and constraints to the part just like any FEA, then set goals. My goal was to reduce the part weight by 40 percent. When you hit the ‘solve’ button, the program goes to work doing iterative solutions, removing material from the low stress areas on every iteration until your goals are met."

Optimized axle geometry inspired by generative design led to a 42 percent reduction in weight of the axle bearing.

“After several iterations, you start coming up with this organic part design,” Arnold continues. “5-axis machining was not an option, not in any cost-effective way. Maybe with investment casting or molding, generative design might be worth it. But I took inspiration from the geometry that generative design created. I reworked the part geometry in SOLIDWORKS, thinning the web and adding some ribs, all while keeping the part geometry simple enough for 3-axis CNC machining. I ended up with a 42 percent reduction in weight compared to the original part's geometry.”

Leveraging the software to go through design changes, Arnold found that things moved faster because the Ansys software didn’t require re-meshing of the entire model after geometry changes.

“While in the ‘Explore’ mode, Ansys Discovery leverages the GPUs in your graphics card which is simply brilliant! The ‘Explore’ mode is the ultimate sandbox for every design engineer. Using the ‘Design’ mode, you can quickly change your CAD geometry, then pop back into the ‘Explore’ mode and solve your analysis study without the need to mesh and re-mesh your model each time, letting you know if you are on the right path. I can solve iterations of my designs 10 times quicker in the ‘Explore’ mode than with traditional FEA process. Once I have refined my design, I pop into the ‘Finalize’ mode and use a traditional Ansys Mechanical solver to mesh and run my final study,” Arnold explains.

This process of design, test, repeat is key to how the AdvenChair is going through continuous improvement—even after their product hits the market.

A Whole New Market

According to Arnold, one of the challenges with designing an off-road wheelchair is that there are no industry standards. Combining elements from both the rugged bicycle world and the medical industry created design challenges, but also opened them up to who might use this product.

“I think the awareness of the need for this type of product has increased since we started working on AdvenChair,” explains Babb. “There are a number of older people with Parkinson’s who wanted to go back out on their favorite bike trail or go to their favorite fishing spot again.” Babb and Arnold have been looking at a number of different areas that can utilize variations of their wheelchair design, including for students to get outside with their classmates and on cruise ships to help people embark on beaches.

Babb says, “The origin of the AdvenChair is ‘adventure wheelchair.’ Originally, we envisioned something that was going to be useful in both the backcountry, as well as in town. Initially we planned for it to be lighter, but to make it useful in the backcountry it needed to be more tough than light. The next iteration will definitely be lighter but we’re also considering developing something that will be light-duty—an ‘urban version.’”

Babb and Arnold are excited about the future of AdvenChair, as they prepare for the delivery of their first production run next year. “We’re just motivated by people wanting to have experiences outdoors,” Babb says.

They plan to have more iterations before each production run, but for now they’re looking forward to learning more about how folks can use their invention.

For more on SOLIDWORKS, check out the whitepaper Simulating for Better Health.

1. Author note: An offroad wheelchair from Icon has been covered in EngineersRule.com here Three Wheels, 3,000 Watts and an Ingenious Designer in a Dec 29, 2017 article. The AdvenChair was meant to be more rugged and light than the motorized Icon Explore wheelchair with its stainless steel frame. The AdvenChair is modular and can be used as a regular wheelchair or put into "off-road mode" by adding the third wheel whereas the Explore has a specific use case. The heavier Icon wheelchair will be used for motorized hiking and biking, while the lighter AdvenChair is adaptable for everyday use.

Or, have you ever watched Star Wars and pondered the real technology that might be required to make an actual lightsaber?

James Hobson, also known as The Hacksmith, started his career as an engineer after graduating in 2012 with a Bachelor of Engineering in Mechanical Systems Engineering from Conestoga College in Ontario, Canada.

“The day after my last exam I started working for a company called Athena Automation, where I helped design the base weldments for injection molding machines,” Hobson explains. “I learned a lot at that job in sheet metal design, hydraulics, pneumatics and preparing proper engineering drawings for manufacturing. Within a year, I felt I had learned all I could and moved back to my hometown to work for Christie Digital Systems, where I helped design movie theater projectors.”

Becoming a Non-Traditional Engineer (Is an Understatement)

While working for Christie Digital Systems, Hobson took advantage of his time in their large rapid prototyping lab and learned about manufacturing more complicated parts and components. He relished his experience with the company, but knew his passion was more than average engineering.

“I signed up for YouTube's partner program a few weeks before I graduated,” he explains. “At that point, it was just a kind of pipe dream: ‘Darn, it would be cool to make money off of the Internet….’ But I kept working on it, and when I saw an opportunity, I took it.”

(Image courtesy of The Hacksmith.)

Hobson was putting in a typical 40-hour workweek with his employer and then putting in another 40 hours during nights and weekends. “I knew something had to change.” After trying to arrange a part-time contract that didn’t pan out, he handed in his resignation and took to YouTube full-time. “I'm glad it worked out that way because if I didn't give YouTube my 110 percent, I might not have made it as far as I have,” Hobson says.

“I make this joke a lot... Most engineers design brackets full-time. Brackets to hold different parts. Brackets to hold assemblies together. Enclosures to hold those assemblies,” he continues. “Ultimately, unless you're the lead engineer responsible for a product, you're just making brackets! I didn't want to make brackets anymore. I wanted to make full-out working prototypes, week after week. Normally engineering is slow. R&D skunkworks is fast and exciting! I needed to be the one to come up with the ideas.”

Now, Hobson is the star of a YouTube channel with nearly 11 million subscribers, averaging millions of views on every video, as he designs, prototypes and destroys an array of fictional tools and devices by bringing them to life.

(Image courtesy of The Hacksmith.)

Designing Fictional Tech Isn’t Simple

There are justifiable apprehensions to creating a real-life Iron Man suit and a reason that a working lightsaber hasn’t been tackled by Lockheed Martin. Fantasy technology is often impractical, challenging and dangerous… and that’s if the tech is even remotely based in reality.

“I'd say the biggest challenge with any fictional technology is when the writer doesn't have a good understanding of real-world physics, Hobson explains. “To quote Spiderman referring to Captain America's shield, ‘That thing doesn't obey the laws of physics at all!’ I absolutely love science fiction titles where there's at least a basic understanding of science.”

Movie magic isn’t always feasible in the real world, even if we were centuries in the future—but sometimes it is. “I absolutely love the Expanse series, because a lot of their ideas of the future are grounded in science, and actually make sense!” Hobson says.

When building something that has a basis in real science, he says that “It's a real treat, in that case. For every other case, we just have to do our best—and usually, that means having a corded power supply, since, in comics, small power modules seem to be readily available!”

One of The Hacksmith’s earliest projects was developing metal Wolverine claws, based on the character from Marvel Comics. This exposed him to the possibilities of creating fictional ideas from comics, movies and video games and making real, working prototypes.

Hobson defines his team’s design process as often simpler than a traditional engineering process. “We start with the idea or the concept from the movie, game, comic, whatever. We break it down to its core ‘abilities’ and then we look for existing tech that is similar. When we find something similar, then it becomes a question of, well how would we go about modifying or ‘hacking’ this, to turn it into the piece of fictional technology?”

That’s when Hobson and his team really start their design phase. “We focus on how it's going to work in practicality, the aesthetic, and any other remaining unknowns that might require a bit of R&D testing to confirm. It's that simple,” he says with a smile.

More often than not, the first prototype they produce is what ends up being the project in their videos. Multiple iterations of the same prototype really are not a thing in the world of The Hacksmith. If they find themselves in a situation where their project requires a lot of design and less manufacturing, they will develop a prototype before filming. “This is probably the better way to do it but for some things, the first prototype is all we've got!”

Even The Hacksmith Has Typical Engineering Challenges

Hobson explains that one of their most challenging projects to date with building a half-scale Cybertruck—channeling Elon Musk to build a working replica of Tesla’s new truck.

“The Half Scale Cybertruck was a pretty good test of our abilities here at Hacksmith Industries. We initially wanted to build one the size of a GoKart -- and to do it in a week. That didn't happen,” Hobson shares.

The project ended up being the size of a golf cart, and then the Hacksmith team began to encounter feature-creep, “adding more features here and there. In the end it took us around five to six weeks to fully build it, but it was totally worth it. I think one of the hardest parts of making our projects is deciding where to stop. There are always more features to be added, but we always have to ask ourselves, what is the minimum viable product?”

Typical engineering challenges, even when making fantasy tech, require real-life engineering solutions. The Hacksmith crew uses an array of manufacturing equipment—everything from a plasma table to CNC machines to welders, and anything else you might stumble upon in an engineer’s shop.

And, because Hobson is a traditionally educated engineer, they use SOLIDWORKS to do all of their design. “We grew up with [SOLIDWORKS], we worked in the industry with it… going on 14 years of experience now. Hard to teach an old dog new tricks! It really does enable us to make some awesome stuff.”

Hobson says that they are excited to challenge themselves with more design and to do more big projects like the Cybertruck in the future.

(Image courtesy of The Hacksmith.)

Sci-Fi Ideas Actually Made Real

One of The Hacksmith’s most celebrated projects is creating a lightsaber. While it isn’t exactly what the Star Wars franchise depicts, it is pretty close—and in all actuality, it matches what franchise lore defines as a proto-saber. This is due to the powercell challenges mentioned previously.

Regardless, Hobson managed to make a retractable, 4,000° plasma lightsaber. It even surprised the Hacksmith Industries team with its capabilities. “Our lightsaber ended up being pretty damn functional, which made the test video super fun,” he shares.

“My goal is to get all our future projects to the point where they just work, where anyone could pick them up and make them do what they're supposed to do,” Hobson says. “But a lot of our stuff is just prototypes, so it's not always possible.”

Hobson and the Hacksmith Industries team has grown quite a bit since their early projects seven years ago. As they look forward, they are hoping to do bigger and bigger projects. In true comic book fashion, he explains, “We're in the process of looking for a multi-acre commercial property with room for dozens of buildings. My plan? To create Hacksmith Industries Research Campus. I have a whole Master Plan about how we're going to get there…”

For real-world product development with SOLIDWORKS, check out Developing Better Products in the Cloud.

Jonathan Tippett has taken to robotic-human interaction in a different way. He has built a full-scale sports mechanical robot, or as it is known in this fringe of robotics, a sports mech.

Two stories tall and weighing 3,000 kg, think of it as the power-loader from Alien playing rugby and demolition derby at the same time.

“My inspiration came from growing up mountain biking, snowboarding, riding motorcycles and practicing Capoeira, an acrobatic non-contact martial art,” Tippett explains. “All of these things required a special blend of practice, training and focus, and they all had a certain degree of consequence if you fail. That combination of skill, practice and consequence leads to some of the most rewarding experiences of my life. Combined with a childhood love of dinosaurs, dune buggies and excavators forged in the crucible of Burning Man, the result was a giant human-piloted exoskeleton, purpose-built for off-road racing: the sports mech.”

Tippett gained the confidence to start the task of building his mechanical robot by building a giant mechanical spider in 2006 with a group of madcap engineers. The Mondo Spider, as it was dubbed, went on to become one of the show pieces for an educational charity that Tippett helped form, known as the eatART Foundation. The foundation looks to foster a community and “pooled the skills and resources of like-minded creatives around a mandate to support the production of large-scale, technically sophisticated artworks with a clean energy educational theme.”

Tippett was able to incubate his mech technology for almost a decade at the eatART laboratory before joining forces with Furrion, “which gave us the resources to build the full-scale machine,” he says.

How Do You Start Designing a Mech?

At around the age of 10, Tippett found himself playing with 1/10th scale electric radio-controlled off-road race cars. He credits that interest with leading him down the path of getting a mechanical engineering degree from the University of British Columbia in 1999.

His vision of developing a sports mech—version one is known as Prosthesis—started where all crazy ideas begin: with imagination.

“I had a vision for the experience I wanted as a pilot. Then I did hand sketches for more than a year, followed by about four years of CAD, calculations and FEA. This was complemented by years of building (and breaking) things with my own two hands to temper the theory,” Tippett said.

The biggest challenges of building a real-life mech are pretty obvious: time, money and space.

“These are common challenges in any ambitious project with a business model that seems too distant for most to imagine. The fact that it was giant made all three of those challenges accordingly larger,” he said.

At the end of the day, the biggest challenge was that nobody had done this before, Tippett explained. “There was no ‘mech design’ section in the Machinery’s Handbook. It took a lot of imagination and trial and error, especially to achieve the smooth parity between pilot and mech.”

There was a struggle to find the right balance between amplifying the movement of the pilot and making the machine too sensitive. Obviously, you don’t want your mech to take an unexpected leap because you moved the controls a bit too far.

“If you get it wrong you can create a ‘kinematic feedback loop’—a.k.a ‘the rag-doll effect’ where the movement of the mech jiggles the pilot, causing them to generate unwanted inputs in the exo-frame…and around you go,” Tippett explained. “In the worst case, you have a 200 HP bucking bronco on your hands, and things can actually become quite violent.”

From start to finish, Tippett and his team have used SOLIDWORKS to create their Exo-Bionic technology and Prosthesis. Through integrating off-road racing components with industrial motion control, he has created a human-piloted machine that is surprisingly agile.

His team has put every feature of their CAD system to the test. “Mechanical design, motion simulation and FEA, generating solids to export to our custom CNC tubing cutter, DXF’s for water jetting, rendering for marketing and promotion. The works,” he said.

“The CAD workstations have been pretty quiet since we moved to testing and pilot training, but we’ll get to work on Mech 2.0 soon enough and we’ll be blowing the dust off them then,” Tippett added.

Driving a Mech is Different Than You Think

Tippett’s Prosthesis sports mech has been in development for quite some time. In fact, Tippett made waves back in 2014 at SOLIDWORKS World when he showed off the control system of what would become his sports mech.

This type of control system has some interesting advantages. “The main advantage is that it’s totally awesome,” Tippett said. “Joking aside, the human control aspect is central to the whole purpose of the project. The purpose of the project was always to create a challenging and rewarding physical and mental exercise for the pilot—a.k.a., a sport.  It also vastly simplifies the design and development. Most of the ‘coding’ is done in the pilot’s brain.”

In terms of mech driving as a sport, the team has been referring to this “coding” process as training. Tippett and his team are in the process of working with several athletes to train them to drive a mech.

“Now that we have the baseline mech technology with Prosthesis, we need to create the sport. Team Canada National Champion Skeleton racer, Cassie Hawrysh was the first of many world-class athletes we have lined up to help.”

There are three main goals for training and learning with athletes for this sport:

1. Learn what skills or strengths lend themselves to being a good mech pilot.
2. Learn how to teach and learn mech piloting.
3. Explore what mech sports will look like.

“As the athletes and fans generate interest in the sport, Furrion Exo-Bionics will continue to advance mech technology, enabling the pilots to push themselves further,” Tippett says. “The more interest and excitement we can generate with our pilot training program, the sooner we can begin building Mech 2.0.”

Tippett and his team plan to make the next generation Prosthesis two-thirds the size and half the weight, but maintaining the same power.

Where Is This All Heading?

Tippett and Furrion Exo-Bionics are launching a Kickstarter campaign to launch into the next phase of this project, which involves developing this mech system into a sport.

“With the technology fundamentally validated by Prosthesis, it’s time to bring in the humans. It is the innate spirit of human competition that will breathe life into the technology we’ve created,” Tippett said.

Tippett and his team are looking to use feedback from the test pilot athletes to find out what this sport has the potential to be, as well as shine some light on the technology. “We want to bring the technology out from the shadows of the lab and into the world where it can do what it was supposed to do—create an exciting new experience for humans,” he explained.

The Furrion website describes the significance of the scale of this project, stating, “...our exo-bionic mechs serve as a unique platform for the development of multiple branches of technology. In addition to large scale human-in-the-loop motion controls, they are also an evolutionary leap towards a future powered by mobile electric power systems.”

The Kickstarter will raise funding to both fuel mech research and development, as well as help training and testing with professional athletes who can lend their expertise to the evolution of the sport.

To see how SOLIDWORKS is being used in racecar manufacturing, check out the whitepaper Giaffone Racing: Expanding into New Racing Markets and Improving Performance with SOLIDWORKS Topology Optimization Tools.

But what happens when robots battle?

You may remember BattleBots from the show’s early days on Comedy Central, where some of our beloved Discovery Channel heroes got their start. These days BattleBots has been on ABC, Discovery Channel and the Science Channel, and the robots are only getting more intense.

Contemporary BattleBots robots have to fit inside an 8’ x 8’ square and weigh less than 250 lbs. While an array of other rules exist to keep the battles fair, the 250 lb death machines can be pretty liberal with destruction.

Will Bales is the driver and engineer behind Hypershock, a bot which is known for its vertical spinner and aggressive speed. Bales thrives on the dichotomy between his job as a medical device engineer with Syntheon and building battle-ready robots in his free time. “During the day, I’m a medical device engineer, designing stroke therapy systems, and at night, I’m building death machines,” Bales says.

The Hypershock BattleBots team (L to R): Isaac Lubarsky, Will Bales, Kyle Awner.

What It Takes to Design a BattleBot

Bales’ job as a medical device engineer is a bit of a juxtaposition to his involvement in the world of BattleBots. “Medical device engineering has got a super long lead time, like years, so having BattleBots where the show gets approved and we have to quickly turn around a robot, sometimes in a matter of a few weeks—it’s good to have that dichotomy in my life.”

Bales started in the world of engineering when he was in elementary school when his friend and teammate to this day, Tyler Bond, started building robots together. “We did FIRST LEGO League and other robotics programs in middle school and high school programs,” Bales explains. “We were very hands-on, whether it was cars or robots, we were always tinkering with things.”

“My senior year of high school, we won the high school division of a robotics competition,” he says. “Fast forward a couple years, and I get a call telling me that BattleBots is about to get a deal with ABC and they are going to need robots, fast.”

For one of the high school competitions, Bales and his team built a competition robot in about a week—and won the battle. They’ve kept that swift process going with more BattleBots—and its paid off.

Each BattleBots episode is filmed over a two-week period, but most of the builders are given very little time to prepare a robot once they know the show is happening. This is why many builders will use the same or similar designs year after year.

While builders will make tweaks to their design, unless a robot was a complete failure the season before, teams rarely take to redesigning their BattleBot.

That is, except for Bales and Hypershock.

“We’re always trying to avoid the ‘silver box with wheels’ robot problem,” Bales explains. While they want to be successful in the BattleBots arena, the Hypershock team also want to step outside of the box.

“The idea of Hypershock as a BattleBot is four big wheels, a spinning weapon on the front and very fast. That has held true throughout my tenure on the show, but basically every component has changed over iterations. The only thing that’s been the same over the last three seasons are the tires, that’s it,” Says Bales.

Bales and his team redesign Hypershock year after year. “We’re always trying to keep a similar aesthetic over the years, so that it’s recognizable, but the guts are different every time,” he explains. This may seem counter-intuitive, since the show operates on extremely tight deadlines and when the teams arrive for filming, they just have to work.

HyperShock 1 through 4.

“I think it’s a net positive for us that we redesign Hypershock every year. Redoing it every year has its challenges, but it feels like two steps forward, one step back,” Bales says. “We definitely think we are honing in on the best possible thing we can do. Ultimately, we’re doing the redesign because it’s fun—we enjoy it. It’s a design challenge and a way to express our creativity.”

Over the years, the design effort of Hypershock has had its ebbs and flows. Bales works closely with a graphic designer who does the team’s uniforms, as well as the robot’s aesthetics. Their back-and-forth results in a functional yet TV-ready robot.

For the mechanics of Hypershock, Bales works closely with his childhood friend, Tyler Bond. “He’s also in medical devices, so he and I will run into ways to design or manufacture components or materials that we want to try during our day jobs,” Bales says. “Inevitably, we end up thinking everything that we did the previous year on BattleBots is crap and we need to redesign the whole thing.”

Bales and his team use SOLIDWORKS in both their day jobs and when building Hypershock. “When I was a middle schooler, a mentor came into our robotics club and taught us SOLIDWORKS. We were hooked. It’s been the standard wherever we’ve worked, and it’s just become a part of our workflow for building a BattleBot as well,” Bales says. “It’s especially useful because we’re trying to do things quickly. Whether we need to pull in parts from McMaster or models from gearbox manufacturers or exporting to machine shops for manufacturing, everybody understands the SOLIDWORKS file format.”

HyperShock designs in SOLIDWORKS.

What Makes Designing a BattleBot So Hard?

Arguably, one of the biggest challenges when designing a robot for battle is making sure you have a balance between rigidness and agility.

“The robots have to be both robust and agile, but because we’re masochists, it also has to look cool,” Bales says. “At one extreme, you have robots like Duck, which is made out of machined solid billet. They have these massive, thick pieces of aluminum that are meant to be as durable as possible. But because robots hit so hard, the game of ‘I’m going to make a stiffer robot than you’ doesn’t always work.”

Other robots, like HUGE, have worked to be as agile as possible. A lighter, more agile design allows more effort to be put into the weapon, but also makes the robot more susceptible to attacks.

With Hypershock, Bales works to maintain a balance between rigidity and agility. One of their first iterations of the robot was made out of a carbon fiber assembly.

“We were looking to create something a bit out-of-the-box for destructive robots,” he says. “So, we came up with a carbon fiber, monocoque, stubble spinning weapon with a hydraulic flipping arm—a crazy thing—just because we were throwing everything at the wall to see what stuck. Just to kind of see what happens and do the coolest thing that we could.”

The team quickly realized that design was too agile and not stiff enough, so now they use a steel sheet metal assembly.

“Last year we put a lot of effort into letting the robot be as stiff and robust as possible, but also being okay with some flexibility and shock mounting all the components we can,” Bales says. In fact, Hypershock has never lost a match due to failing internal components. “All the guts in the robot have worked, so we think that Hypershock has hit this kind of sweet spot between being rigid and being flexible. It’s robust enough to take the hits when we get them, and we’re not wasting weight, space and aesthetic opportunities on rigidity.”

This balance plays into the refined design of Hypershock. Bales and his team have added rigidity over the years, but that means that they need to find places to lose weight. While it might seem like 250 lbs is a lot for a robot, you run out of pounds quickly with weapons and armor.

Bales uses SOLIDWORKS Simulation to find places where they can adjust weight. “On the inside of the robot, we have optimized parts for weight and space, especially in the drive train. If you can take grams (or half an ounce) off of parts, pretty soon you’re up to a pound and another pound, and that gives you room to add armor somewhere or make a gear a little wider,” says Bales. “In some circumstances, that can make or break you in a battle.”

HyperShock’s drive jackshaft assembly in SOLIDWORKS.

A New Definition of Time-to-Market

The company that Bales works for designs medical devices and does research and development.

“It’s funny to see where the overlaps are between designing medical devices and designing a BattleBot,” he says. “My company does research and development, so the thing that we do the best is rapid prototyping, quick iteration and testing or showing off the prototype that we can hopefully sell, and then we do it again.”

Bales explains that at his day job, they have times where they go through two or three generations of a part or assembly design in a single day. “Putting ourselves under the gun and doing things right up until the last minute where things have to work the first time, and in front of an audience on BattleBots, has really helped me in my day job. A live audience and big company CEOs are different, but they both like it when things work the first time.”

Hypershock has often been set apart from other BattleBots because of the team’s design priorities. “When choosing design priorities, we look at what worked and didn’t work for us in previous years, but also what did and didn’t work for other bots,” Bales says. “Also, we look at the trends in weapons and defenses—what’s everybody doing?—to help determine our priorities.”

Tight timelines and a little bit of procrastination has actually helped Hypershock in the BattleBots arena. Because they work until the last minute on their robot, the team often has an opportunity to catch online glimpses of their robot competitors so they can design to battle or find different ways to use the same concepts.

“To be honest, we leverage the fact that everybody else has much better time management skills than we do. Procrastination in engineering can be an advantage,” Bales says.

Whether he’s designing robots to battle each other or designing medical devices, Bales has seen the challenges of balance and timelines in engineering. Surprisingly, he’s seen a lot of crossover between these two very different forms of engineering. “A lot of the connections that we’ve made, resources that we’ve found and the knowledge and skills that we’ve fostered building robots has made us really good at making medical devices really quickly.”

While this year’s BattleBots season has been put on hold due to COVID-19, Bales and the Hypershock team are ready for when the next season fires up.

Learn more about SOLIDWORKS and simulation-driven design with the whitepaper Design Through Analysis: Today’s Designers Greatly Benefit From Simulation-Driven Product Development.

Engineered for Racing and Consumers

It would make sense for a speed shop to have a race team. There is a lot of crossover between the parts that are sold and the builds that the Speedway team races.

Jared Cote, a senior product engineer at Speedway Motors, explains, “Our market is street rod parts, muscle car parts, race car parts… Our customers build everything from a ‘32 Ford to sprint cars.”

Speedway Motor’s clientele is often building the same vehicles their race team uses. In fact, many of their new product concepts come from one of the many employees who also enjoy these automotive hobbies outside of work.

David Wallace, who is in charge of all the machine shops and manufacturing at Speedway Motors, describes his customer as anyone “from a normal guy building a car in his garage to somebody trying to build a show winning car.” It’s a pretty wide group of customers.

Because their customer-base is wide, the company has created a wide base of products and capabilities. “Speedway Racing Engines will build any type of motor you want,” Wallace explains. “We have a lot of CNC and manual equipment for metal cutting, and we also have welding fabrication, assembly, lasers and press brakes, different areas for MIG and TIG welding. We even build all our own fiberglass bodies in our fiberglass plant.”

Prototyping in the Field

From concept to production, Speedway Motors keeps most of their work in house. Their race team is also known as their verification team. Leveraging in-the-field prototyping helps the company’s small engineering team speed up their time to market.

“Our ideas for new products usually come from merchandising, ownership or another employee within the company,” Cote explains. “The engineering team will create the design. Dave [Wallace]’s team in the manufacturing area will build the prototypes. And then usually, the prototypes will go to the race team/verification team to test the parts. Then it’ll come back to us for a second round of prototypes or production prints to be made.”

The engineering team utilizes a number of different tools to develop their parts. Often, they’ll 3D scan a car body or other specific parts for fitment and reverse engineering. “We use Geomagic for the scan data and then we design everything in SOLIDWORKS,” Cote says.

Cote and his team also use a combination of SOLIDWORKS Simulation (for finite element analysis) and a CMM (coordinate measuring machine) to calculate the durability of parts.

“Recently, we were doing some testing on a torque arm and we were working on getting some CMM probe points. We also 3D scanned it,” Cote explains. “Then we installed the arm on a car with our race team. After we got done running a car with it, we went back and checked those points and rescanned to see if it had any signs of high stress or permanent deformation, to see if there’d been any kind of failure during testing.”

They’ve also used brittle-coating to test parts, which fractures in response to surface strain beneath it.

From Design to Production

Speedway Motors manufactures the parts that they sell. Their onsite facilities provide an array of CNC and fabrication capabilities, and are an essential element to their business. While their engineering team will send the production team production items, pre-production parts and prototypes to be manufactured, the shop also utilizes SOLIDWORKS for their own needs.

“We use a lot of assemblies,” says Wallace. “We make a lot of machined parts, sheet metal parts…simple parts, but then they all get put together in an assembly to make sure that we’ve got a working finished product. And we’ve been using CAMWorks inside SOLIDWORKS for a long time in the shop.”

However, designing products isn’t the only place they use CAD. In the fabrication and welding shop, Wallace’s team uses very specific welding tables. “They have a 50mm grid pattern, which allows us to tell Jared [Cote] and the rest of the engineering team what specific fixturing we may need to hold a part that might be made of five or six sub-components. We’ll do all the fixturing right out of engineering,” Wallace says.

“We’re a pretty small engineering group, so we do a lot of manufacturing engineering, as well as the design engineering,” Cote adds.

Wallace continues, “A lot of our fixturing we do in SOLIDWORKS, so when there’s a product change, we can control the fixturing change easily. It used to be that a lot of our fixtures were … we’d build a good part, but we’d hand-build the fixture off of that. If you change the part and your fixturing is by hand, it makes it really hard to replicate anything. By doing everything in CAD, if there’s a product change, we can both easily change the fixture and control the accuracy of the end product with the workholding.”

Having the ability to keep both engineering and manufacturing based in one software makes it easier for Speedway Motors to change things as time goes on and affords better control over their end product.

As Speedway Motors races towards faster time to market with new products, they are also looking to provide value for speed shop enthusiasts.

“We understand that our customers want to know how parts are built and fabricated because we have so many customers that are buying specialty parts,” Cote explains. “So, we offer a simplified engineering drawing on many of our top-selling house branded products. These drawings give the customer critical dimensions, which allows them to decide if the product will work for their application.”

Because most of their customers are building cars from the ground up, or close to it, they often need insight into the design and manufacturing specs of Speedway Motors products. “When you call the Customer Experience Team, we even have dedicated race car and street car techs on staff to answer customer questions that are specific to the type of vehicle they are building,” says Cote.

Speedway Motors takes pride in having such a tight connection to their customers and their passion; both Cote and Wallace (and their teams) work very closely together.

“Our engineers are always in the shop, so they are always seeing the new tools and machines that we’re using. We can show them the shop capabilities, and then they make improvements to their designs based on what we’re capable of by adding new tools,” Wallace says.

Internal collaboration and customer connection seem to be keeping Speedway Motors headed in the right direction. With a team that is engineering and manufacturing parts that they are as passionate about as their customers, they may actually deserve their claim as “America’s oldest speed shop.”

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Of course, because so much is expected of these buggies, jeeps and off-road chariots, there are parts and components specially designed to hold up to the abuse. One of the most maltreated components are the front and rear differentials, as they are often the closest exposed component to the dirt trail, aside from the tires.

Enter Tim Fulton and his company, Alien Machine Worx.

While Alien Machine Worx operates as a job shop, cutting production parts on various CNC machine tools, they also make customized components for off-roaders and hearty differential covers.

“We do parts for lots of people in lots of different industries. We do some off-roads parts for other people, some medical stuff for other people, we do some aftermarket parts for certain companies, and we make our own differential covers and shifter knobs,” explains Fulton.

He has had an interest in off-roading since he was just a kid. There are rumors that he started off-roading at 16 years-old with a 1970 Chevelle, but his official start was when he got his first Toyota truck at 17. The sport has long been his passion, but three years ago it also took hold of his career.

Lots of Engineering in a Simple Component

Differential covers, or diff covers, are not complicated parts. The only purpose they serve is to protect the precious gear mechanisms inside the differential, and OEMs often make simple versions out of sheet metal.

When you’re off-roading, sheet metal doesn’t hold up well to various sized rocks and debris. “OEM diff covers get holes in them pretty easily. If you roll over a rock it can get a hole punched in the side,” Fulton says. “The worst part about damaging a diff cover is that if you don’t have somebody behind you, you don’t even know you have a hole in there. You could still drive 100 miles; it’ll just go dry. Then you’ll burn up your whole differential before you even realize you put a hole in the cover. It’s a peace of mind thing when you’re doing off-roading.”

Alien Machine Worx diff covers are ¼” thick and have built-in ribs, called rock sliders, that not only add thickness but also provide deflection for the cover. There is a lot of design effort that goes into these diff covers, including stress testing and simulations in SOLIDWORKS.

“We’ve even taken them out and shot at them, and they haven’t cracked,” he explains. “The biggest thing is protection. People will spend X amount of dollars setting their gears up and all this stuff is inside the differential, and then they put a cheap cover. Then all of a sudden, you smash that whole gear set when you run into something.”

Alien Machine Worx also uses a specialized material for their diff covers: ductile iron. While it’s cast similar to cast iron, ductile iron is harder and less brittle, and you can weld on it. That means that it’s more versatile and more robust than cast iron.

“If somebody wants to get rid of nuclear waste, they use ductile iron. The thing about ductile iron is that you can put different formulated mixtures into it. I’m not going to give away the secret sauce, but my mixture has a bunch of different things in it to make it a lot stronger. You can mix ductile iron however you want, but with our mixture it’s stronger and designed for exactly what we are using it for.”

Because Fulton uses SOLIDWORKS for all his design work, as well as collaboration and manufacturing, he can input ductile iron as a material. While the program doesn’t know his exact formula of ductile iron, it’s close enough to provide accurate stress testing. He explains, “Basically, I can hold the two tires at the end of the axle, and I can drive force on the diff cover. With our diff cover, it shows the axle bending before the diff cover will give. And that’s straight on pressure—it’s not like real life where you have deflection, where you’ll hit the rock and bounce over it.”

“Testing in SOLIDWORKS gives me a really solid baseline, and then things are more forgiving out in the real world on the trails. In the simulation it’s something like 15,000 lbs of pressure pushing on that thing. You won’t encounter that in real life because the vehicle will just bounce over it at that point,” Fulton adds.

Custom Job Shop and Production Machining Business

While much of Alien Machine Worx’s focus is on their diff covers, Fulton also runs several production parts and one-off custom components for his clients. “We do a lot of production work for other companies. There are times we’ll have a machine dedicated to a customer for months, just working on their product line,” he says.

Because his company has become so well known in the off-road market for their diff covers, Fulton has taken on business building components for other companies in the space. “The diff covers are what has gotten our name out there. So, there are a lot of other companies with off road components that know we know what we’re doing in the off-road space, so we help them build their parts as well.”

“That’s kind of how Alien Machine Worx got its name… we did stuff that other people didn’t want to do. I tell people that if you can go to the store and buy what you need for $50 or $100, you don’t want to come to me. But if you really need something special or unique, then they would come to me and I would build whatever they wanted,” Fulton says.

He once had an off-road race team ask about carrying an extra alternator and starter on their buggy. While the path of least resistance would be to stick the parts in foam inside a toolbox, Fulton decided to go a different route.

“We mounted it on the roll cage so that it was easy to access. So, if their alternator went out as they were going across the desert, they could just jump out, unbolt two bolts on the roll cage, throw those two bolts on the engine compartment, and they were up and running again. We made it quick for them to move from point A to point B without those components flopping around and getting damaged in a toolbox,” he says.

Fulton thrives on doing customized work, which makes sense since the off-road market is all about unique methods of making things work.

Communication Becomes Key

Alien Machine Worx leverages a number of features in SOLIDWORKS, but really it’s about communication. “I had one person fabricate their own steering linkage and it rubbed on our diff cover after he installed it. Because of the way it was built in SOLIDWORKS, he was able to call me, we opened up the model and we did some measurements. Since he was a fabricator, he just took a grinder to the diff cover, and I was able to tell him exactly how much to grind off to make it work and still be safe,” Fulton says.

“SOLIDWORKS allows me to communicate with my customers easily. As a machine shop, I don’t think I’ve seen a blueprint in 10 years thanks to this system.”

Alien Machine Worx works with a variety of clients, both in and out of the off-road industry and some even in the medical space; oftentimes those clients don’t know much about manufacturing. “If somebody sends me their models, the hardest part more often than not is how am I going to fixture or hold them. Not everybody thinks about how they are going to machine a part when they are designing it.”

“Long before I build anything, I can share it with a customer. We’ll change things with a customer’s design to get it to an efficient manufacturability state. Then, we build all of our fixturing, all of our tooling, that’s all done inside SOLIDWORKS.”

Fulton continues to always look for ways to streamline his manufacturing practices, while also finding more efficient ways to design and improve client models.

“I lay in bed at night and come up with designs. Eventually, I need to get up and get them into CAD. I’m always thinking about ways to try and make my product better. That’s what keeps me up at night. What would people prefer to have over the competition. I live and breathe this stuff,” he says.

While Fulton figures that Alien Machine Worx will always have a job shop element to it, he’s sure that their presence in the off-road space is going to grow as well.

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