Shaking Hands Again

This article discusses that technology can ease the adversity between industrial designers and mechanical engineers. In many manufacturing organizations, engineers coexist, albeit sometimes uneasily, with the industrial designers who shape the way the product will look on the outside. While mechanical engineers take care of laying out the mechanisms inside the product’s shell, industrial designers are concerned with its external shape and appeal. At Symbol Technologies in Holtsville, NY, that uneasy alliance does not exist anymore. Symbol’s devices have to be rugged because, although they are meant to be held easily in the hand, they can just as easily be dropped. The company uses I-deas, from EDS of Plano, Texas, for CAD modeling. Before beginning to sculpt on screen, the designer now talks to the engineer about the product. The engineer might know that both a scan engine and a set of batteries must be included inside the final product. The CAID and CAD software work together in such a way that, if an industrial designer changes something about the outside shape, the mechanical features automatically update to accommodate the change. Engineers do not have to rework the internal parts each time the external changed.