Photos courtesy of Rooney Studios
Computers and the Internet have no doubt transformed the design process. Where once designers had to operate together in the same room with a complex array of tools, they can now set up shop in a cafe or in their house or anywhere else in the world. Thanks to collaborative, iterative design tools, they can even work together on the same files. Yet industrial design remains on the tail end of the curve: With huge, expensive machines and a very physical prototyping process, product development has generally required a more in-person collaborative experience, with lots of studio time engaged in making or an expensive process of outsourcing production.
3D printing, as we know, is changing this, but just as the cost of production goes down, we also need new ways to facilitate collaboration in the hardware space, if not a new model altogether. Fusion 360, a new Autodesk product, opens the door for just that, allowing industrial designers to quickly and easily share CAD designs in the sort of collaborative, social environment that software and graphic designers now take for granted.
But what does that look like? What could it look like? We spoke with David Perry, founder of OpenFab PDX, a digital design and fabrication service based in Portland. Perry’s embraced the open hardware movement fully, using OpenFab PDX as a platform for teaching about 3D printing and making the process more readily accessible to more people. At the same time, he’s become more active online, where he both shares his knowledge and gleans that of others.
But best of all? He does Bozo’s balloon animals one better by bringing 3D printing to kids’ birthday parties.
“I’m a modern-day clown,” he noted in an interview with Core77. “Instead of hiring a clown for an hour, I can bring a 3D printer to a birthday party—use that as entertainment and engage people around creative expression and technology.” Recently, for Halloween, Perry set up a table in his driveway with dry ice, candles and dozens of 3D printed objects like a ghost and pumpkin that he had downloaded from Thingiverse. In addition to candy, kids could walk away with both 3D printed goodies and the realization that they, too, could quickly and easily make hardware products.
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