How 3D Modeling is Beneficial in Product Manufacturing & New Product Development Services

Everybody likes to talk about how rapid prototyping is now the new face in New Product Development (NPD) and touted to be the future of the manufacturing industry in its entirety. People seem to forget that rapid prototyping, whether by 3D printing or CNC machining, just doesn’t happen without 3D modeling (well, CNC machining doesn’t always need 3D modeling, but we’ll have to gloss over that for now). Don’t get us wrong, rapid prototyping is without a doubt a major breakthrough in product design and the development process.

But this doesn’t change the fact that no matter how advanced your 3D printers are, they’re nothing but overpriced paperweights if not for 3D modeling services. You don’t have to be an expert to do the printing, but you certainly need a skillful artist (sometimes a team of skillful artists) to produce high-quality 3D models of your product. No disrespect to all the 3D printers and CNC machines everywhere, but they’re only as good as the models fed into them. In other words, even the most sophisticated tool can still create a terrible prototype unless you give it an accurate 3D model to begin with. 

Before you even think about building a physical prototype, it’s always advisable to first figure out if you can build a digital version of it on a computer. You’re not living in the 1980s when powerful computers and CAD software cost a fortune and then some. Today, everyone can get a perfectly decent laptop capable of running the latest 3D modeling apps without breaking the bank. This also means that there are plenty of CAD design professionals out there offering their services at affordable rates.

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And if anything less than an experienced digital artist with a proven track record won’t tick your box, Cad Crowd is always a good place to start the search. Thanks to its rigorous vetting process and a heavy focus on NPD, the freelancing platform is home to thousands of the most talented 3D modelers from all around the world. 

What can a 3D model do?

It really does quite a lot for NPD and manufacturing processes. You can almost say that it’s the backbone of all manufactured products you find in the market today, from small toys and big cars to industrial equipment and skyscrapers. Let’s put it this way: every product begins as an idea, often an abstract one at that, too. An idea can be an improvement over an existing product or a brand-new invention. An idea is usually followed by a concept generation, where you draw ugly sketches on paper sprinkled with barely readable handwritten notes. Each sketch represents the shape and form of a possible product.

You can make as many sketches as you like, but you still have to discard most of them and pick only the best concept to develop further into a prototype, and eventually an actual product. While there’s nothing wrong with such a process, the journey from the moment a cartoonish yellow lightbulb appears above your head to the production line is typically riddled with mistakes and redesigns. If you have to use a physical sample every step of the way, the effort becomes impractical and unnecessarily expensive. 3D modeling designers move nearly the bulk of the design work into the screen, and this apparently offers more than a fair share of advantages to the NPD process.

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A clear all-around view

Let’s assume that last night you dreamed about receiving an award for the best product design, say for an ergonomic computer mouse. You still remember very well in the morning when you wake up, about where the award ceremony was held and even the shoes you’re wearing, but strangely enough, you don’t remember anything about the mouse itself. Like any good inventor, you’re now determined to make that dream a reality. The idea has presented itself, convincingly, in a dream, and now it’s time to try to remember every single detail about the mouse design.

Being ergonomic, the mouse is likely a little bit curvy and made of high-quality material. It must be excellent for office and gaming purposes, with a great battery life thanks to reliable wireless connectivity. You have two options to approach the concept generation here. Either manual drawing on a sketchbook using a pencil or 3D modeling on a computer. The former, old-school method means you have to translate the design into two-dimensional sketches. It may take a dozen or so sketches to cover one big mouse, including its sleek wheel and contoured edges. Because they must all be drawn to scale, the award-winning dream quickly turns into a conceptual nightmare.

In contrast, the new-school approach with computerized 3D CAD design services allows you to visualize every aspect of the design on a single page (or window, technically speaking). The 3D model is inherently interactive, meaning you can zoom and rotate the design as you like. It lets you see how good or bad the design is from all sides by simply sliding a screen slider, rather than flipping through pages of black-and-white drawings. And making changes takes only a few clicks. Well, maybe more than a few clicks, and you definitely need at least two buttons, but you get the idea.

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Once the model is finished, even if the design doesn’t look very ergonomic or worthy of any kind of award, at the very least, you have something that resembles a computer mouse, presented before your eyes in a 3D visualization. Whether or not the model actually comes close to the design in your dream is another question entirely. You don’t remember, remember? If you want, you can hire a render artist to turn the 3D model into a photorealistic visualization. Although rendering isn’t really necessary at this point, slightly more lifelike imagery can tell you a whole lot about the look and feel of the design.

It gives textures and colors to the materials, fingerprint patterns on the left and right clicks, graphics on the body, tacky RGB lighting all over, the lot. Perhaps it might be even better if you also hire a professional to do the 3D modeling in the first place. As a matter of fact, many 3D artists at Cad Crowd excel at both 3D modeling and rendering, and offer a complete range of product visualization services to clients of all sizes, including individual inventors, small businesses, and large companies alike. 

All the details you need

The computer and the software cannot care less about the product you want to make. All they care about is the geometric data you use to build the model. In the simplest possible words, the machine translates the data into a visualization that you understand as shapes, dimensions, spatial relationships, and positions of objects in a virtual space. This means you can be decimal point accurate with the design process, and the software will generate the model based on the data you give. Mind you, the software doesn’t know if the data is correct or incorrect. It only does what you tell it to do.

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Such a system grants you the freedom to try and think of yourself as the most meticulous mouse designer to have ever walked the Earth, blessed by the ghost of Douglas Engelbart himself. It allows you to be very precise when deciding not only the overall dimension of the mouse, but also the size of every button, the enclosure thickness, the scroll wheel diameter, the gap between the left and mouse clicks, the tolerance between the battery compartment and the lid, the typeface for the laser-etched logo, the length of the screw, and just about every other variable you can think of. When 3D rendering services enter the scene, you have an even bigger range of options, such as enclosure materials, textures, and patterns.

The chances of the software being inaccurate are practically zero. Your chances of being inaccurate, on the other hand, are almost definite. Say you’ve successfully managed to model a battery compartment lid that’s 1mm longer and wider than it should be. You have a model that’s accurate to the data, but it still won’t be the right model in this case. The good thing is that you don’t have to wait until a physical sample confirms the mistake to identify the problem. If something doesn’t fit in the 3D model assembly, it won’t fit in the real world either, unless there’s a hammer involved. But don’t let this kind of mistake drag you down to discouragement. The fact that you can model a lid is an achievement in and of itself. Simply revise the dimension and let the software figure out the rest.

Putting the design to the test, virtually

What is it that everybody really wants in a computer mouse? An unmatched durability to the point where it’s still perfectly usable even after half a dozen drops from the desk. People, and especially gamers, can be careless and clumsy, but not computer mouse designers. All other features, like ergonomics, good battery life, a million DPI, and macros, come far second to being indestructible. And this is where design simulation comes in. First things first, for the simulation expert to run a design simulation, he needs a data-rich 3D model. You need a visualization that represents more than the shape and form of an object. It also needs to contain information about material specification (types, density, conductivity, thickness, etc.) and a typical usage scenario.

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The method is technically known as Finite Element Analysis (FEA), a type of simulation to find out how a design withstands environmental forces like heat, vibration, changes in temperature, or other physical effects of any sort. Most products are designed to give what the target consumers want. Suppose your target demographic includes people who suffer from a condition known as “gamer rage.” Well then, the mouse should be able to withstand all the typical symptoms associated with it. One of the most common symptoms is throwing the mouse out the window after losing a game, or bashing it against the desk when the Internet isn’t working.

This doesn’t mean you need to design a mouse that’s easy to throw around. Instead, you have to make sure the mouse is still in good working order after many, many, many times of being thrown around. How do you figure this out without destroying hundreds of physical prototypes for testing? FEA engineering services, which essentially amount to torturing the product in a virtual environment. For the simulation to run correctly and produce accurate results, every part of the design must be specified in detail. Take the enclosure material, for example, and let’s assume you’re testing two competing designs. One mouse has an enclosure made from recycled plastic, while the other has a magnesium alloy body.

Remember that the simulation has to reflect the typical use case for the target demographic. Naturally, the simulation depicts the kind of damage to each design following an episode of gamer rage, and the result is probably as you expect. The plastic mouse shatters when it hits the neighbor’s fence, whereas the metal one survives with barely a scratch after hitting the same fence. For the sake of being obsessively thorough, you’re allowed to run the same test on other components, too.

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And it’s not just about a match between a mouse and brute force. Maybe the product engineer wants to test how durable the design is in extreme temperatures because some gamers do live in countries where normal, comfortable weather doesn’t exist. But not every test has to push the design to the limit of its strength. For instance, a simulation to see if the mouse is still usable after getting submerged for a few seconds in coffee or soda. Don’t forget that some people have a habit of spilling a drink on their desk as they find it soothing. A mouse is often a collateral victim of this surprisingly relaxing hobby. 

FEA is crucial in all NPD projects. The idea behind virtual testing is to optimize the design long before you bulk purchase the raw materials and fabricate a prototype. If the design needs refinement, you make the changes to the 3D models in the virtual environment as well. It’s certainly cheaper and more time-efficient than having to test a physical sample for each round of testing. And as a bonus, there are no bits of broken mice to clean up later. 

Prototyping made easy

Given the right models to work on, 3D printers can do wonders for your NPD. Imagine designing a computer mouse in a world devoid of rapid prototyping services. After you sketch the design in black and white, the first thing you do is to try to find a skillful handyperson to build a physical sample of the product. Because a lot of other people also develop their own products and have booked most of the competent craftspeople in town, which does happen more often than you think, you have to settle for the less experienced one. You send the sketches and wait for a few weeks until the prototype is done, only to realize that the scroll wheel won’t turn at all because somebody used too much superglue.

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It’s a slow and expensive process, especially if you have to repeat the whole thing many times over. But we live in a world filled with an abundance of 3D printers. The only thing you need to make them work is, once again, a 3D model. So long as you have the model saved in the right format (usually STL for non-colored model, but other formats like 3MF and OBJ also work if you want to print the model in multiple types of materials and colors), the process is just as easy as printing a photo, except for the typically long waiting and the occasional mishap of a clogged nozzle.

If the product consists of multiple parts, for example, a computer mouse, obviously, the usual approach is to print all the individual parts first and then assemble them later. Depending on model complexity and how expensive your 3D printer is, the printing time may take several hours to a full day. Still, this is faster than manual fabrication. It’s worth mentioning that 3D printers are getting more affordable these days. Even if you don’t plan to buy one anytime soon, there are plenty of rapid prototyping professionals you can hire to help build your prototype. Most, if not all, of these services include post-processing as well.

This means that at the end of the printing process, you won’t have to deal with messy models with smudges and jagged edges. The trick for efficient rapid prototyping is to never print an unfinished model. Just because 3D printing is (relatively) affordable, at least for plastic parts, doesn’t mean you should rush it. Instead of spending resources on printing a model that you know won’t work, it’s always better to allocate the time and money on optimizing the model first. Scrutinize the details, check and double-check the dimensions, have the model rendered, run FEA, and then triple-check if you have to.

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Launching a product to market is indeed a race, but it’s not a race where the winner is determined by the number of prototypes you make. One of the marks of a good NPD is resource efficiency. You don’t want to go back and forth from physical prototyping to fixing mistakes and spending valuable time and money in the process over and over again. An efficient NPD is marked by a thoughtful 3D modeling effort followed by a thorough virtual simulation. Only when you’re sure that the 3D model is exactly as you want it to be can you send the file for 3D printing services. You don’t need dozens of printed models throughout the project.

Two, maybe three physical prototypes should be plenty enough, unless you’re so careless that most of your 3D models turn out to be of poor quality. The same thing applies to CNC machining, which is probably more relevant here since your mouse is supposed to be made of metal. That said, 3D printing technologies have gone a long way from their early days of plastic-only fabrication to full-scale metal prototyping. The range of available materials is pretty decent, including aluminum, stainless steel, titanium, and even alloys.

Design for manufacture and assembly

On the subject of printing individual parts, 3D modeling and rapid prototyping also help confirm that your product is manufacturable and can run through an assembly line smoothly without frustrating factory workers. Sure, your computer mouse looks great on screen as a 3D model and with the help of photorealistic rendering experts, but are you really sure the design is also optimized for manufacturing and assembly? Let’s make this clear, first. Many product designs are harder and more expensive to mass-produce than others.

When the design is complex enough, the manufacturing facility may need to create new tooling just to produce a single part, significantly increasing costs. Design for Manufacture (DFM) services aims to minimize production costs while maintaining high quality. The easier a product is to manufacture, the cheaper it is to mass-produce. There are many factors at play here, from the availability of raw materials and tooling requirements to the number of parts and potential for automation. Just like with 3D printing, chances are a production line doesn’t make a complete product in a single run.

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It builds the individual parts first, then sends everything to an assembly line for the final processing. But unlike 3D printing, where every part can be fully customized, most factories aren’t very fond of creating and installing new tooling for every new design. They prefer using the existing equipment because this saves them time, money, and headaches. No wonder a lot of computer mice look very similar to the one you’re using right now.

When the time comes for you to work with a manufacturing firm, one of the first steps in the partnership is to entrust them with the final version of the 3D model, with an NDA attached for sure. They take a look at the 3D models and will never fail to propose some changes to the design. Bear in mind that these changes are not intended to modify the design, but only to make the parts more easily manufacturable. Say the top metal enclosure of your mouse design originally consists of multiple separate parts: left click, right click, and a body secured to a base plate using three titanium screws.

The factory can fabricate all those individual parts, but it’s much easier just to make them into a single component. After another FEA simulation, the new design apparently makes the mouse even stronger. It’s, of course, a lot more complex in reality, but the example will do for the purpose. The factory workers will also find it easier to put the product together in an assembly line. Instead of installing multiple parts to build just the top enclosure, they now have to deal with just one component to fit the rest of the product.

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CGI for the marketing

Each time you bump into someone who tells you that product photography won’t work for a brochure, step away immediately and avoid confrontation at all cost. Product photography does work, only not as good as CGI for marketing purposes. CGI, or more specifically 3D product rendering services , allows you to create an imagery of your product in the most flattery fashion imaginable. Unlike photography where you actually need physical objects, otherwise the camera won’t focus, a rendering is a completely made-up picture that accurately depicts the actual design.

You don’t want to mislead some gamers into thinking that your mouse is made of sterling silver when in reality it’s just gold-plated. In all seriousness, make sure to be truthful with the product imagery. While it is possible to build a CGI of a computer mouse that can transform into a small robot or one with a design so futuristic it’s used by the Terminator, consumers always appreciate honesty in marketing, even gamers. A photorealistic rendering doesn’t happen without 3D models. A render artist takes the model, applies the right textures, sets the lighting, and runs them through a specialized software to produce a high fidelity image.

The product might be rendered against a plain white background for clarity, or alongside complementary objects to mimic a usage scenario. A rendering can be an animated video to show an exploded view of the design, or interactive to allow the audience to take a closer look at the design. Another benefit of rendering is that you can reuse the base 3D models as many times as it takes and apply different styling, colors, graphics, etc. This is particularly useful when you have a variety of aesthetic options for the same product. With 3D modeling, all this can happen without having to hire a photographer and using props of any sort.

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Wrapping up

3D modeling is much more than just a convenient tool in new product development projects and the manufacturing industry at large. It’s the foundation of modern product design services, where efficiency and accuracy are of the utmost importance. Virtual simulation, rapid prototyping, and photorealistic rendering open the door wide to getting down to the nitty-gritty of a design process. A 3D model makes for the perfect ground to experiment with everything about the design, from the single largest component to the tiniest parts of it, including the visual appeals of the finished product.

How Cad Crowd can help

Unsurprisingly enough, just like everything else, 3D modeling is easier said than done. Nobody in the history of 3D modeling could pick a laptop, download Blender cause it’s free, and master the trade overnight. No need to be alarmed. Cad Crowd can help you connect with tens of thousands of professional digital artists from all around the world. The platform is here to facilitate fruitful collaboration between experts and clients throughout all stages of the product development cycle. With strict vetting and screening, Cad Crowd ensures you’ll work only with the best-qualified 3D modelers in a bespoke, managed partnership that benefits all. Contact us for a quote.