44.326A CAD/CAM Prof. Kunwoo
Lee
Prof: Kunwoo Lee: info click here
Credits:3
Lecture type: Lab practice
plus theory on CAD/CAM (Computer Aided Design and Manufacturing) systems.
Grading: Final Quiz +
Final Project
Lecture notes: gmail public account:
ID: public.mae.2012
Password:seoulnationaluniversity
Class Intro:
This seems to be the
only class that I seriously enjoy with an exception to some lab classes where
TAs speed up the lecture. Theories regarding Rapid Prototyping to geometric modeling
to injection modeling are discussed providing students appropriate knowledge to
real life manufacturing techniques. Additionally, software such as CATIA,
SolidWorks, Processing and 3DMax are taught to better equip the students for
their final projects. Perhaps the most intriguing part of the course work has been to
utilize Kinect in the project. As the theme for this semester’s course is QOLT, or
rather to put it in layman’s terms, something that improves the lives of differently
abled people, the use of Kinect has been seen as an integral part to project
design. I have to say, we have some pretty exciting ideas in store.
Project:
Each team consists of 4
members: 2 from Seoul National University's Mechanical and Aerospace Department while 2 from Ihwa Woman’s University's Computer Science Department. . The project requires
students to have both software and hardware base and so forth requires pupils
from both majors.
As discussed above, QOLT is the theme but the students can do their project on their own independent
terms. However, students who choose to be loyal to the theme will be given a
financial support of up to 1000 dollars to fund their project. If it happens to
be unique, the students are given the option to apply for patent.
The project can be
continued once the semester is over.
Week 4:
The week’s first lecture
was given by a CAD designer from Samsung mobile (guest speaker) who has been
working for the company for the last 12 years. He touched on topics such as how a
mobile phone is designed, how the design is inspired (cars, fashion) and how the
design in the future would look like. As technology is taking strides in an
unprecedented rate, its hard not to see a flexible smartphone or smartphone’s
with multiple LCD in the near future.
It was amazing to meet
someone from the inside, who most recently worked on the Galaxy SIII
design. The Q and A session went as follows:
Regarding product development:
High end mobile phone
such as the Galaxy series takes about 9 months of product development. It takes
atleast 6 months to design the smartphone as we have to constantly think how we
can make it better than the last one. We take inspiration from nature, music,
art, cars and fashion and integrate it to the product.
Usually the engineers
provide us the design specifics, LCD sizes (the gorilla glass that we used
where pre-specified), battery sizes and then we work on the product. We make
multiple designs before we can choose the optimum one.
Regarding other
products, the design life could be as short as 2 days (all-nighter) or as long
as 6 months as I said previously. Companies such as HTC and Nokia take more
than a year to design high end products so telecom providers such as AT&T
trust Samsung to work on the company specific phone designs.
Apple though, has a
totally different concept of working. They take all the time in the world to
develop that perfect phone. Time is not the factor, quality is. However, for
Samsung, developing something in the shortest possible time is important to
remain competitive in a transient market.
Regarding design
patents:
Usually design are not
patented as its really hard for designers to avoid already patented designs.
Apple was the first company to achieve any patent of their square round design
and that took them a long time to achieve. Adeptly they divided the same patent
into three parts and applied at different time intervals. When all the patents
were accepted, they combined to work as one. Very clever indeed.
I see the problem of
design patent to be only hurting the American market as the Asian and European market
seems to be indifferent to these patents. We will have to see what happens in
the future. If each company is to patent certain designs (rectangular, square,
round) then it will be very hard for future designers to come up for something.
So I seriously hope this will remain here.
If you have any further queries about the design, you can reach him here:
Tae Kim
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