New! Improved! Tide!

Kenneth Wong at CADalyst has a good article (Competitors weigh in on Autodesk's latest catch phrase) writing on Autodesk's claim that Inventor's Functional Design is "a different modeling paradigm" -- a claim that competitors UGS, PTC, and SolidWorks dispute. He describes how they, too, have facilities that mimic Autodesk's "simple schematic and a series of input variables to automatically generate 3D geometry."

One vendor makes a claim of uniqueness; competitors protest. That's good.

That's good, because 15 years ago and more, CAD vendors were silos. One would make a claim and no one outside of that CAD vendor's circle would notice -- or, if they noticed, they wouldn't understand the claim. "Does not compute" took on a whole new meaning.

A classic example was the ad Intergraph ran in CADalyst magazine in the late 1980s, back when the magazine was AutoCAD-only. The ad showed just a shepherd's crook, and the headline read, "Follow the leader." The reaction of AutoCAD users was, "Huh?", because they knew that Autodesk had 70% of the market (as the company liked to claim back then). Furthermore, AutoCAD users didn't know what an "Intergraph" was.

Many users may not know -- or care-- what a "functional design" is, but at least today the claim of uniqueness is being debated. And marketing people are thrilled by the added exposure.

Whether unique or not, I feel that "functional design" is a poorly worded phrase, because all designs are supposed to function. Maybe the Autodesk thinkers thought that the phrase describes how designs should be driven by function. But "Design From Function" doesn't work for me, either. How about "purpose-driven design"?

Comments

[Sean Dotson]

While I think "functional design" has been buzzword-ified by ADSK it really does have meaning. Currently most CAD programs focus on the solids. How to create lines that form regions that form solids and the features that modify these solids (holes, fillets, chamfers etc..)

Personally I think ADSK's 3D Grips and Primitives (al la 3D AutoCAD), which they also call "functional design", is a misnomer.

Functional Design is about "designing", not modeling. As discussed at COFEs this year, functional design is about allowing me to specific what belt I want to use, the center points it should hit, the loads it will see and having the program do the modeling for me.

Both ADSK and Solidworks( and I'm sure others) are starting to build this type of feature into their software but they still have a LONG way to go.

[Darren Young]

"I feel that "functional design" is a poorly worded phrase, because all designs are supposed to function."

In a nutshell, if you think of "Design" in "Functional Design" as a Noun (the thing being dessigned) then yes, it's a poor phrase for the reasons you indicate.

On the other hand, if you think of "design" in "Functional Design" as a Verb (what the designer does), then it is a good phrase.

Then yet again, because "design" can be used and thought of either way (Noun or Verb) in that phrase as to bring confusion in the first place, perhaps it's not the best choice.

...But then yet once more, it does have everybody talking about "funcitonal design".

I guess you could say I'm on the fence.

[Mike]

Looks like Ralphs been reading Purpose Drive Life.