Freestyle modelling – a faster route to stylish conceptual design
Freestyle Modelling is an emerging modelling methodology with its roots in the sort of sub-divisional surface modelling traditionally used by gaming and animation designers. It is now being increasingly used in the solid modelling environment. How does it help in product development?
In this article we’re going to take a look at a the latest extension to Creo Parametric which adds FreeStyle Modelling capability to this already established tool.
The key application of the extension is in early modelling of flexible surface models.
The feature makes it easier and faster for product designers to model shapes with curvature and tangent continuous features, and has specific advantages in any sector where high quality organic complex surfaces are required.
Context
The first step of taking a new product engineering design innovation from idea to reality is the development of a concept design. In almost all cases, the early quick win lies in the product of a representation or mock-up of the intended product.
With the competitive requirement to rapidly advance a design from early concept design stage, through prototyping and on to manufacture, any innovation that can speed up the conceptual design phase for product designers is a very welcome development.
When accompanied by enhanced flexibility in design, and capability to model organic shapes it’s sure to be a winner.
This is where FreeStyle Modelling comes into its own.
How Does Freestyle Modelling Work?
The core function for the designer is the ability to take a primitive 2D shape such as a sphere, cylinder or cuboid and morph the solid by means of manipulating the edges face or vertices of a user defined mesh on the solid surfaces.
These flexible, complex and perfectly smooth surface features can be created in fine detail, by grabbing and dragging the object to create the desired form.
The fact that these surfaces can be designed as automatically curvature and surface continuous (not rippled or creased), is a critical requirement for aesthetic designs, resulting in A class surface quality.
For the designer, the benefit is a much easier and faster method of adding very fine, localised curved surface features to an underlying shape and manipulating these features in subsequent iterations, whilst always retaining a high level of aesthetic style.
The resulting design can then be output into a data file to create a high quality prototype or manufacturing part.
How can FreeStyle Modelling benefit your designs?
For product managers and development managers, access to this new form of modelling offers a more flexible design process and one that is both time efficient and robust.
These complex surfaces automatically resolve themselves as curvature continuous surface solid models. This is critical for producing the engineering data needed to make prototype parts using 3D printing, production tooling, CNC machining as well as for additive manufacturing and other production methods.
Creating this type of complex solid geometry has not – until now – been possible using advanced interactive freeform surfacing or traditional boundary surface modelling.
Cambridge Design Technology and Freestyle Modelling
Cambridge Design Technology now uses Freestyle Modelling software to create aesthetic designs. Offering this design process to our clients affords:
Greater design flexibility
Faster concept design process
Easier development of early concept designs from scratch.
To find out more, contact Jon Plumb jplumb@cambridge-dt.com or call 01787 377106.
About Cambridge Design Technology
Cambridge Design Technology is an innovative creative product design and technology development consultancy that helps organisations in the medical, scientific, technology and industrial sectors to realise their design requirements for commercial success.
The benefits of these product and technology design services include reduced time to market as well as validated confidence in their development from start to finish.
These optimum design services support our clients in meeting their market and end user requirements on time and on budget.
References: https://community.ptc.com/t5/-/-/td-p/446275
