Hi Strange question but as a student of a design course I have been thinking about this quite alot. How do you go about designing say your next pc mod? what inspires you? and how do you decide when your design is finished? Examples of your work and how it developed would be interesting. Discusss..
It's a trap No but seriously, as someone who has a lot of trouble getting my creative ideas out of my head and onto paper/a screen/into reality I am inspired by absolutely everything. Every logo, every colour scheme, every angle of a structire interests me. I lifted a can of Rockstar Energy juice the other day and loved the colour scheme on it so much that I kept the can, then when I got home I went straight to my PC and laid the colour scheme onto a case project I'm designing at the moment. Things like that happen to me pretty regularly. And as for when the design is finished? For me, it rarely ever is. With PC design, most of the time it's a compromise due to time or money constraints.
PENCIL AND PAPER. Sketching is the KEY to a good design in my opinion. Draw down whats in your mind, and then start applying criteria etc, and you'll naturally start developing the idea and adding dimensions etc. If you launch straight into CAD or the like you are nearly always going to come acropper. Once you've developed your idea and got a good estimate of size and the parts, then move onto either more detailed working drawings or onto CAD, but keep sketching. If theres a part that you're not sure what to do with, sketch it out and it will become far more clear. I'd like to wager a good amount of cash that a large number of most peoples favourite mods on here have had no CAD done what so ever. And as for finishing a design, I find i'll normally get to a stage where i cant at the time work out where to look next, or more likely, i'll get an itchy Dremel finger and start cutting stuff up. Also, you'll most probably find your design and ideas progress and develop as you go through the manufacturing process. And if you're anything like me, when you've 'finished' the manufacture, you'll then find things you will wish you had done and still want to do.
me personally, its all about the specification. So with PC mods, i ask myself questions about what hardware and cooling is to be used, which in turn in followed by packaging all these components into the most efficient space that can be managed easily, i.e finger room, space to use tools. Then concepts of how the case could look, with various ideas. Surely you've done design weighted matrix's for your course, selecting your concepts and then by process of elimination selecting the winner. Sometimes external factors can inspire a mod, such someone else's mod or a spark of genius on how to package something, because really that's all were doing isn't it. A mod or project should be part of you, not a copy such as muderbox's and a kin. Your very own finger print so to say. Little link of my final year project, a lot more work went into that project than shown, but I am lazy when it comes to such things of uploading stuff that doesn't really serve a purpose.
Pencil and paper as well for me, always sketching to begin with. As i'm not very good with any kind of CAD program (not even sketch up) i start there then rest, for the most recent stuff around the home etc., has all been on the fly. Fixing issues as they occur. I prefer that style of evolution in things anyway. P.S. That is genius Burnout! Being sans-automobile as i am, i would so buy one of them.
I have yet to design a complete PC system, but I have designed quite a few mechanical parts for machines and whatnot. It is a bit different because here you have functionality as a MUST, but I do that with everything I design. I first make it work the way I want it to, and then I add 'pretty' to it afterwards. In my head, something can be the most beautiful thing ever, but if it does not work it is crap.
I'm about to sit down and start desigining a whole new product tonight and tomorrow - a portable/transportable audio broadcasting rack. You say a flight case with some bits in it and a lid on top, I say - "it ain't that simple"
All sorts of things inspire me, everything from this I see in nature to existing designs, be it civil, mechanical or pretty much anything really. On a professional level adaptation is the most common basis for a new design, using an idea or principle from one product and modifying it to work for your new one. A very small percentage of design is 'new' and these come rarely and are often influence by the most random things. As for PC mods there are some obvious building blocks that any design has to be based around. Other than that, inspiration is the only limit to what you can design. Asking as to what inspires others is a bit of a moot point as we are all inspired by different things. As a mod is a purely personal thing why not start by making a list of the things/themes you like. Personally I'd love to make a PC that looked exactly like Orac from Blake's 7 or an updated homage to it. If you are not a great artist try making a design scrap book by cutting out images from magazines or from the internet that you like the look of.
I always go with a biro pen and paper to get initial ideas down quickly and roughly, Ill have a very rough idea in my head of what i want to achieve. Any minor detail/components usually get sketched in with a pencil. Generally my first sketches are small or parts of a larger section, and are often quite random, the pic below was from one of the design comps on this forum. From the initial sketches ill move to sketchup/model making depending on which suites the design best, When im happy with the final Design/Model ill produce a final render.
