Reconciling Form and Function through Generative Design
Author
Summary, in English
The possible results of achieving these goals are that designers gain a larger repertoire of morphologies to work from, the product development time can be reduced, the design concepts can stay true to the vision of the industrial designer, and the customers can tailor products to their needs.
To achieve these goals, an approach is suggested that entails developing generative design tools that allow a user to design products with complex forms, while assisting them in ensuring the products’ producibility and function. The focus is on increasing the integration between the industrial design activity and the other product development activities, more specifically engineering design and production
The purpose of this thesis is to investigate this approach, and to develop and test its technical feasibility and acceptance among designers and consumers. This has involved compiling an inventory of suitable morphologies, production systems and products, implementing and testing several generative design tools in industrial projects, looking into challenges concerning user manipulation of complex morphologies and industrial implementation, developing techniques for handling engineering constraints and objectives, testing the acceptance of the generative design tools with industrial designers and customers, and producing physical objects based on the output from the tools.
The results of this work show that this approach is feasible and is even already useful to the industry: the studies establish that there exists a feasible domain of application; they confirm that there are computational methods for handling engineering and user constraints and objectives; in the performed project the design process could be made to fit the needs of both consumers and designers; finally, physical products have been produced and have received acceptance by peers in international design fairs, thereby verifying and validating the output of the tools.
Department/s
Publishing year
2015
Language
English
Full text
Document type
Dissertation
Publisher
Division of Machine Design, Department of Design Sciences, Faculty of Engineering LTH, Lund University
Topic
- Production Engineering, Human Work Science and Ergonomics
Keywords
- Generative design
- morphological repertoire
- constraint handling
- optimization
- customization
- industrial design
- engineering design
Status
Published
Supervisor
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISBN: 978-91-7623-541-6
- ISBN: 978-91-7623-540-9
- LUTMDN/TMKT-15/1030-SE
Defence date
10 December 2015
Defence time
09:00
Defence place
at Stora Hörsalen, IKDC, Sölvegatan 26, Lund University, Faculty of Engineering, LTH.
Opponent
- Kristina Shea (Prof.)