Design or Modeling
I’m often asked if I’m a designer. My answer is always the same, NO! Just this morning the new estimator here at Byers’s asked me that question and I in turn asked him if he had read the quality manual yet. In which you will find my job description:
Identification of organizational structure and acquisition of resources which are necessary to achieve objectives. Meeting established goals for value and quality. Experienced in currently utilized CAD/CAM software and knowledgeable in current PC software and operating systems. Interacts with engineering staff. Duties include: generating necessary documents to meet the objectives. Responsible for documentation of prototypes, new designs, and technologies. Assists Sales with providing applications to assure customer satisfaction.
In other words my job is to document new designs…not generate new designs. But then I ask myself, do I design anything? I am usually given a drawing of a sheet metal part or assembly supplied by our customer. The design as far as function has already been done. But when I model the sheet metal parts that will be fabricated into the customer’s design I have to make decisions as far as how many pieces will be welded or fastened together to end up with the final product. I tend to make these parts self fixturing by using tabs and slots or Cleko clamp holes, does this qualify as design? Maybe it’s manufacturing design?
What about when the welder comes in and asks for a weld fixture to hold the parts in tolerance while he welds them together? I guess that is design, maybe not of a product but the tool used to make the product.
When you have been doing sheet metal for so many years you can generally look at a customer’s drawing and immediately see the individual parts that will be required to fabricate his design. Other times I will pull out my sketch pad and do a dirty sketch in an isometric view of how I picture the fabrication, there will usually be many eraser marks on this sketch as I refine the way I will end up modeling the parts. When I’m happy with the sketch I then fire up SolidWorks and start modeling the parts. Sometimes as individual parts brought together in an assembly file and other times only the main ‘wrapper’ will be drawn and located in an assembly file and then I will go into top-down mode to model the remaining parts. During this stage of the process is where my initial thoughts and sketches are further refined.
The final step is the documentation. I lay out the drawing views just like the customer’s drawing and dimension in the same manner also. This makes it easy to check my model against his design.
I guess my job does include some design elements but the final outcome of my work is a fabrication of someone else’s design.
I come across the same thing, except it's almost the opposite. I have a design degree and and engineering degree, but lately I'm doing more oversite of design and fabrication. completely changes what you've come to know yourself as.
ReplyDeleteI still call myself a designer, cause that's what I like to do and it rolls around in my head all day.