3D DIGITAL PROTOTYPING: HOW IT REVOLUTIONIZED THE PROCESS OF PRODUCT DESIGN

Digital prototyping is the practice of designing, testing and refining a product as a 3D model before anything physical gets built. One clarification before we start, because the phrase is overloaded: the same words also describe clickable app mockups made in UI tools. This page is about physical products, the kind that get manufactured, shipped and sold. Now, in the context of product design, 3D digital prototyping has a similar position.

The 3D modeling technology, which allows designers to virtually explore the product before it ever becomes real, offers unparalleled benefits. Overall, manufacturers using virtual prototyping build a lesser number of physical prototypes, launch their products earlier, and incur much lower costs. In a world where the pressure on business performance is always increasing, digital prototyping is a heaven-sent solution.

But how did this technology bring about such a radical change? Read on and learn about the 7 key ways in which digital 3D prototyping revolutionized the process of product design!

The conceptual design phase is the earliest stage of any prototyping process. It involves the designers researching market conditions and manufacturers’ needs in order to create a product design concept. In conventional prototyping workflows, this is a long-drawn process where every one of these actions is performed separately.

In a 3D digital prototyping workflow, however, designers can work digitally right from the first sketch till the end of the conceptual design phase. Designs are both captured and reviewed as high-quality digital 3-dimensional images. The designs are also shared in a common file format. Data and feedback obtained from this process are then directly used to make informed product decisions in real time.

In traditional prototyping, identifying and applying changes is laborious. Designers first have to build a physical prototype, test it, then make changes according to their observations, all to create a single working prototype. Errors can only be identified once the physical prototype has been built, and the only way to make changes is to build a fresh one. While effective in the long run, this uses up a lot of time, money, and materials. 3D digital prototyping essentially disrupted this process.

As designers can now analyze concepts in real-life environments within the software, it eliminates the need to build physical prototypes first. Rather, the cycle now starts with the digital analysis and testing of a virtual model. Only when the model is found to be perfect is the physical prototype made. How long that digital stage takes for a typical product is broken down in how long a 3D model takes.

Under conventional prototyping, creating visuals for marketing products is largely done through physical photography. This can only be done once the product was completely ready to market, which is naturally very time-consuming. 3D digital prototyping has turned this process on its head by allowing manufacturers to obtain gorgeous photorealistic images long before the product actually gets ready for the market. These images are as accurate as physical photographs. Moreover, it’s possible to create interactive digital visuals, such as 360-degree-views.

Having 3D rendered visuals at hand makes it easier to create marketing materials and helps product marketers launch their campaigns on time. This offers multiple benefits to marketers as they can easily build up the hype around their products through their social media pages, as well as digital and printed catalogs. Furthermore, companies can use 3D renders to take pre-orders from interested B2B customers. The craft of turning a prototype model into campaign imagery is covered in our 3D product rendering guide, and the modeling itself starts on the 3D product modeling services page.

Physical prototyping-based workflows are characterized by the constant cycle of “build-test-build.” Time and cost factor aside, this leads to a lot of material wastage. In the age where there are statutory laws and regulations around being sustainable, and the need to maintain corporate social responsibility is the norm, this is a major disadvantage.

Now, 3D digital prototyping helps companies up their sustainability quotient in many ways. Firstly, virtual testing reduces the number of required physical prototypes, which reduces the bulk of material waste. Secondly, the ability to assess various options within the product design 3D modelling software gives the exact description of the type and quantity of material necessary to build a singular physical prototype. This takes any guesswork out of the equation. Last but not the least, the data obtained by running various digital simulations gives companies the idea of how various materials compare with the existing environmental regulations and sustainability standards.

Communication between designers and manufacturers in the age of conventional prototyping is known to be tedious and time-consuming. With the entire process dependent on building prototype after prototype, keeping manufacturers in the loop is difficult, and their opinions are factored in only during the later stages of prototype development.

The use of 3D digital prototyping has greatly improved the development workflow by bridging the gap between designers and manufacturers. Thanks to convenient digital formats, prototypes can now be shared anytime and anywhere. This helps bring manufacturers on board right from the early stages of product development. Manufacturers can now see their product being developed in real time, and offer instant feedback and input on the manufacturability.

It is a known fact that companies are increasingly resorting to smarter ways of production to cope with the pressures of business performance. Rapid prototyping happens to be one of these methods. As the name suggests, this is the system of swiftly fabricating parts, models, and assemblies using Computer-Aided Design (CAD) and 3D printing. This helps in creating prototypes faster without compromising on their quality. And up until the recent past, this has helped designers create their multiple physical prototypes faster.

3D digital prototyping, however, puts an even faster spin on the already rapid process. By allowing designers to fully test, edit, and run digital simulations on their prototypes for functionality, accuracy, and finish, the need for multiple 3D printed prototypes to test is removed. This allows for testing very realistic prototypes with lesser effort, much earlier in the design process. And when the digital prototype is finally ready, it is fully optimized for physical prototyping.

As mentioned earlier, multiple edits and changes are a norm with physical prototyping. Among other things, this ends up consuming a huge amount of time and money just to create a single working prototype. With 3D digital prototyping, however, both these factors get cut down to the minimum.

Creating a prototype in digital format has a two-fold benefit. Firstly, since designers no longer have to make multiple physical prototypes, the total time spent on the average is much lesser. Secondly, 3D modeling can easily be outsourced. This is simple and affordable since it saves companies from going through the hassles of hiring in-house specialists and buying expensive hardware and software. Both these factors together help bring about a more positive Return-on-Investment (ROI).

So, these were the 7 ways in which 3D digital prototyping has changed the way products are now designed. This method helps designers test the form, fit, and function of the prototype in a real-world context while staying within the digital framework. This has multiple benefits: a more compact conceptual design phase, a more competitive and sustainable prototype, fewer errors, better collaboration with manufacturers, more seamless rapid prototyping, and of course, less overall time and money spent. All of these together have led to designers choosing digital prototyping over other methods, which, in turn, has changed the process of product design entirely.

Looking for 3D modeling and rendering services to rocket launch your products? Contact us at UFO3D today - our professional team is always ready to create extremely photorealistic 3D models of even the most complex designs!

How a digital prototyping project actually runs

The seven points above are the payoff. The work behind them is a short, repeatable loop, and most of the value comes from how cheap it is to go round that loop again.

1. Inputs. Drawings with dimensions, a CAD or STEP file, or photographs of a sample with measurements written down. Whatever exists decides how long the first model takes.
2. The model. The product is built to real dimensions in the package that suits it: SolidWorks, Fusion 360 or Creo when the geometry comes from engineering, 3ds Max, Maya or Blender when it comes from a designer, Marvelous Designer or CLO when the thing is made of fabric.
3. Review on a grey model. No materials, no lighting, nothing to hide behind. Proportion and fit get approved here, because this is the cheapest possible moment to be wrong.
4. Iteration. The point of the whole exercise. A change to a physical prototype means machining, shipping and waiting; a change to the model means an afternoon. Teams that prototype digitally do not iterate a little faster, they iterate an order of magnitude more often, and that is where better products come from.
5. Validation. Manufacturability gets checked against the process the part will actually be made by, wall thickness, draft, undercuts and tolerances, which is the DFM pass. Where the audience matters more than the machine, the same model goes in front of real users as renders or in AR, and preference gets measured before tooling money is committed.

What comes out is not a picture. It is a digital twin of the product: one accurate file that every later thing is generated from, the colourways, the variants, the catalogue stills, the animation and the AR view on a phone. Build it once and it keeps paying out for years. That is the same asset our 3D product modeling services page is built around.

What it costs against a physical prototype

The comparison people expect is model against mock-up. The honest comparison is model against the number of mock-ups you would otherwise build.

A digital prototype is billed on modeling time. At our rate of 20 USD an hour that puts a simple part near 40 USD, a typical product such as a portable speaker near 160, something with a working mechanism near 360, and a watch with its movement from 1,200. A second colourway or a changed component is a fraction of the first, because the geometry already exists.

A physical prototype has no such curve. Every version is a fresh machining or printing run plus shipping in both directions, and the price is the same on the fifth iteration as on the first. That asymmetry, not the sticker price, is the argument: digital prototyping does not make one prototype cheaper, it makes the tenth one nearly free. What moves the modeling number is broken down in 3D modeling price.

Where digital prototyping stops working

It replaces most physical prototypes, not all of them, and being straight about that is worth more than another benefit.

• Anything the hand judges. Grip, weight distribution, the click of a button, how a fabric falls when you hold it. A screen cannot return those, and a sample still has to be made.
• Certification and physical testing. Drop tests, thermal cycling, safety approvals. Simulation narrows the field of candidates; it does not sign the certificate.
• Garbage in. The model is only as true as the dimensions it was built from. A prototype modeled from photographs with no measurements will look convincing and measure wrong, which is the most expensive failure in this whole process.
• Material behaviour at the edge. How a specific batch of recycled plastic actually shrinks, how a particular leather ages. Digital gets you close; the last few percent are physical.

The practical rule is that digital prototyping should carry the design to the point where only one physical prototype is needed, instead of the five or six that used to be normal.

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