life because of manufactured products
and by manufactured products what do I
mean I mean anything you’d imagine
that’s made in a factory it could be the
robotic surgery system that I saw
another in one of the previous TED
discussions here it could be a bicycle
you wrote here it could be the iPhone in
your in your pocket it could be the
machine that made the yogurt that you
had for breakfast all of these things
are manufactured products and it’s not
just about lives for people like us here
in Boston United States think of a
farmer in sub-saharan Africa their life
is touched by manufactured products too
it could be a piece of farming equipment
it could be a mobile phone that they are
using it could be irrigation equipment
anything like that
everyone on earth has their life
improved these manufactured products
where do they come from they’re designed
by professionals engineers and designers
around the world in companies that build
these things I’ve spent 35 years of my
life building software tools that we
sell to these professional engineers and
designers the software I build is called
computer-aided design or CAD so I get to
work every day with some of the coolest
professional product designers on earth
and I can tell you there’s a revolution
happening that’s changing the tools that
they have available and how they work
and that revolution is not just for the
professional product designer it’s
something that you can use to and I’m
going to show you some of the key
changes that are happening in product
design and I’m going to show them to you
not just by talking about them but by
together building a product design
ourselves we’re going to be designing a
battery pack for an electric bicycle
okay so imagine many people have
electric bikes and we’re going to
imagine that we wanted to have a new
battery recharging pack for an electric
bike and we’re going to design it
using the first major change that want
to talk about is the availability of 3d
professional design tools these tools
used to be only on huge computers very
expensive systems very expensive
software thousands of dollars in our
project here we’re going to do an open
source design okay so we can open source
this so anyone who wants to can build it
later we’re going to show you that today
not only do you not need an expensive
computer you don’t need a computer at
all to do to do this kind of design I’m
gonna do it on my phone this is called
on shape it’s a system I work on it’s
professional level three-dimensional CAD
that runs on a phone and so I’m going to
start building our battery pack and then
make a rectangle here and dimension it
so that we get the size that we might
like and I’m going to get some audience
input here come on audience some give me
an idea of what you would like the five
inches okay well I already I already I
already dimension that as as five there
so let’s pick let’s pick this one I’ll
pick eight okay very good something in
my head said something my head said pick
eight this is a great audience
they’re putting up with a lot today okay
so now we’re going to do something the
next we build up 3d models as a series
of what what we call features and we’re
going to put a next feature on here and
we’re going to make this a 3d box so you
see the you see the kind of boxy shape
this is going to be our battery pack and
well as we add more and more features to
it the design starts to look better and
better so here I’m going to shell it out
with this next feature called the shell
feature and we can select a thickness
for that and so now you see that I’ve
turned it from a simple a simple solid
box into a shell box and this is the way
pros build products but the new story
here is that anyone with a cell phone a
tablet and Android phone Android tablet
you can do it and it’s free for open
source projects so that’s the first
major change
the availability of this is part of the
revolution now let’s talk about
collaboration great designs are done not
by single people but they’re done in
teams and so to join me in completing
this design today
I want to bring out two of my colleagues
Philip Thomas and David Ben hi um let’s
introduce them and I want to thank
Philip and David are awesome guys who
have taken time out of their day to join
me and we’re gonna work together on this
design using collaborative collaboration
capabilities now in the past these kinds
of CAD systems were run by a single
individual okay and today we can share
just like we do in Google Docs okay how
many of you have have seen Google Docs
you’ve used it okay great I’m gonna hit
the share button here we’re gonna do
that with 3d CAD so I type in my
colleagues Philip Thomas and David type
in their email address and now instead
of having to wait till one of us is done
with the work and passing a file along
to the next we can all jump in and edit
at the same time and here we go we’re
all jumping in in editing this model at
the same time and I’m able to go in and
start making changes to it in this case
I’m going to be rounding off the corner
while Philip is doing other work and
David is getting it ready for
manufacturing so here are round off
these edges I did a quick round there
let’s let’s get you guys involved in the
audience and sizing the dimension here
of how much do you think that edge
should be rounded you see I’ve rounded
off the corners see I can make it very
rounded or less rounded what very
rounded what do you want like that less
how about there is that good okay good
deal okay so while I’m doing that Philip
and David can be doing other things to
change the the size and shape of this
another thing I’ll do I mean
I’ve designed things like this but
believe me I never do the same thing
every time you know we’re always making
changes so let’s put in something yeah
you know I got to keep it interesting so
there I put that there’s a little detail
there where I’ve put in a we’re gonna
put a 1/16 fill it around the edge and
you’ll see here we call it felts yeah I
rounded off those top edges kind of made
them softer you know that’s the kind of
thing pros do I can change the color
here and you can see that if we had time
we could make this a very a very
detailed design we can pick the color we
like out of the you know whatever we
would we would like and people like we
can collaborate and do this design
together here and I’m going to put a
logo on here and I need a name from the
audience something something original
that you’ve never heard before now so
come on give me a name no come on I want
some we did we used that one last TED
talk I gave
how about a different one now come on
somebody give me a name
what TEDx Dynomax that’s a great one
TEDx Dynomax 2.0 because sometimes one
is never enough and so we put it in
there and now we’re good extrude yeah
you know hey Ted can be fun right that’s
the eighth of an inch there but I’ll
tell you you know seriously the more you
work on it the better the design gets [Applause]