Engineering picture database or map for brainstorming. 5

[IvarA]

Hi! I have been into contruction of mechanical end electrical systems for a while. Especially when I was participating in Formula SAE, I noticed that I could be more creative designing in the workshop than on the CAD. Reason was that in the workshop we had alot of different stuff that I could either modify and adopt or use it as an idea for the final design. In contrast to when working on the computer, your brain gets too busy with other stuff like; how do I make this curve? and your creativity suffers. I remember we designed some nice parts to be water jetted, but when we came to the workshop it failed and we then made a better design just by welding a tube to a flange plus some machining work. The workshop part was made 10 times faster, alot lighter and much easier to make and implement on the car.
So I was thinking about making a picture database map where I upload alot of different concepts, mechanisms, designs etc for catching ideas when you are working on the computer. I remember one company I worked for had such a idea picture on the wall (but it was ofcourse discarded by the CEO)
I just wonder If such a picture database exists already?

 

[GregLocock]

That's a neat idea. Once upon a time there was a search engine that built bubble maps of related concepts, you are looking for a sort of visual equivalent.

Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

 

[MintJulep]

There is this

http://kmoddl.library.cornell.edu/.

And similar books.

 

[Compositepro]

I find the McMaster-Carr catalog to be very useful in this respect. They say they carry over 550,000 items. Flipping through the 3,000 pages of the printed version is often more inspirational than using the on-line version.

http://www.mcmaster.com/#

In any case, designing things gets much easier with experience. That fact will never change. By reading a lot you can learn faster through the experience of others.

There is also the Mahinery's Handbook

http://www.amazon.com/Machinerys-Handbook-29th-Erik-Oberg/dp/083112900X

and Ingenious Mechanisms

http://www.amazon.com/Ingenious-Mechanisms-Designers-Inventors/dp/0831110848

 

[drawoh]

IvarA,

My inclination is to use CAD. I can model, illustrate and propose a design concept, and everyone else can see what I am trying to do. We can then go back and try something else different, or we can adapt the proposal, or we can complete the proposed design and build the thing. With a highly standardized thing like a racing car, you probably can lay components out on a shop floor. If you system is one-off, re-using existing pieces you have lying around is a good idea. If you are designing for production, you need documentation, and you should not limit yourself to physically existing hardware.

A major problem with any original design is thoroughly understanding the requirements. Your design, drafting tools allow you to generate documentation that shows what you think you are doing. It becomes a vehicle for discussion with your co-workers.

Finally, if you are going into any kind of production, and/or you have to pass any sort of certification, you need documentation. The sooner you start this task, the better.

--
JHG

 

[moon161]

One thing I do all the time is snap pictures or make sketches of structural steel details and other things. Google keep is one way to tag, keep and display picture, a facebook account or blog would be an interesting way to do it as well, though be careful about disclosing proprietary work.

If all you're missing is approval, there may be research that supports the idea, and could persuade. Do note that there is sometimes backlash to neat ideas like this, which have lots of precedent, in pre 'acedemized' engineering practice. Engineering and the minds eye

http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/engineering-and-minds-eye

is a good book about this.

I'm a mechanical designer and creative studies student. Would you like to work on something? We might be able to make something neat.

 

[drawoh]

moon161,

Never forget that a lot of seemingly crazy design is nothing more than problem solving. Someone tried several approaches at something, and some solution that perhaps looked stupid at first glance, solved everybody's problem.

--
JHG

 

[SnTMan]

moon161, excellent book. A must read.

Regards,

Mike

 

[IvarA]

Thank you for supporting the idea.
I got many books like 1800 Mechanical movements, 507 Mechanical Movements and so on. Catalogs like RS Components and the Mc-MasterCarr (thank you Compositepro) are nice too. However, I actually fonund some inspirational stuff/pictures on Pinterest, maybe people could contribute into improving whats already there by an engineer-brainstorming tag. Ill look into it making one later, maybe some other app would could be better too.

 

[3DDave]

It's the infinite classification problem. It's been looked at for a long time, but there aren't any good answers because there hasn't been a really good question. The main problem is that there are an infinite number of solutions to any given problem and there is no good way to limit the search space to certain ones. In some places in the search space the best solution is to eliminate the part you started looking for. One needs to be able to pose a solid question in the form of requirements and that has not yet happened.

I find that collecting the requirements is a better start than just blue-skying solutions. I've been sunburned too many times by other engineers using blue-sky thoughtlessly, making complicated and unworkable designs into a 'goal' rather than looking at the actual problem and making sure solutions fit. Sometimes it takes bridging - eg. a car is going to have 4 tires and a place to sit, so start at each end and work to bridge the gap between them.

Other than that, the more you know, the more you can know. Look at everything and see how it really works; carefully separate the appearance from the function (then cry when you realize most cars have a lot of craptacular sheet metal that does nothing for performance or maintainability, just non-functional junk)

 

[moon161]

SCAMPER is a neat technique for divergent production

http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Instructional_design/Divergent_Thinking/SCAMPER

Forced connection is similar to your picture wall

https://brooklynbilbao.wordpress.com/2011/08/02/forced-connections/

Alex Osborn's 'How to Think Up", published in 1942, is the seminal work on this, some credit for/dating of brainstorming goes back to '37, I think.

 

[3DDave]

'Brainstorming' was sold be an advertising agency as the method they used. It's been debunked as a strategy that is actually less likely to produce usable results using similar periods of time and other resources.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainstorming

"Advertising executive Alex F. Osborn began developing methods for creative problem solving in 1939. He was frustrated by employees’ inability to develop creative ideas individually for ad campaigns. In response, he began hosting group-thinking sessions and discovered a significant improvement in the quality and quantity of ideas produced by employees. Osborn outlined the method in his 1948 book 'Your Creative Power' on chapter 33, “How to Organize a Squad to Create Ideas.”

"A good deal of research refutes Osborn's claim that group brainstorming could generate more ideas than individuals working alone. For example, in a review of 22 studies of group brainstorming, Michael Diehl and Wolfgang Stroebe found that, overwhelmingly, groups brainstorming together produce fewer ideas than individuals working separately."

No doubt he hyped it to sell books.

 

[tbuelna]

3DDave-

You hit the nail on the head when it comes to truly creative design work. If you look at the great examples of design work throughout history, you'll note that almost all of them were the product of an individual's efforts, and not those of a brainstorming team or group.

 

[dgallup]

I've always had a dim view of brain storming sessions.

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The Help for this program was created in Windows Help format, which depends on a feature that isn't included in this version of Windows.

 

[dwbarlow]

I'm a software engineer. An open-source project could be proposed for a tool that associates keywords to an image/video database very easily. Call it the MacGyver Project. It would consist of two parts. One would be a SW tool with some artificial intelligence so that a set of key words might suggest a finer set of suggestions. The second part would be a basic knowledge database which is kept free of proprietary knowledge. The basic Knowledge Data Base (KDB) can be updated by an informal committee of peers in a specific application area. This might be enough for many engineers, but some engineers could extend the knowledge with a private KDB not shared with peers.

I am not interested in doing this sort of thing, but I could spare a little time to advise someone how get something started.

 

[AlexJohonnuson]

I agree with you IvarA, the process of finding new or improved design often (at least for my part) comes from the workshop. The more 'stuff' it has the better

 

[geesamand]

http://507movements.com/

David