Getting Human Hands Back Into Digital Design 87
Hugh Pickens writes "Using computers to model the physical world has become increasingly common as products as diverse as cars and planes, pharmaceuticals and cellphones are almost entirely conceived, specified, and designed on a computer screen. Typically, only when these creations are nearly ready for mass manufacturing are prototypes made. But the NYTimes is running an interesting essay highlighting a little-noticed movement in the world of professional design and engineering: a renewed appreciation for manual labor, or innovating with the aid of human hands. 'A lot of people get lost in the world of computer simulation,' says Bill Burnett, executive director of the product design program at Stanford. 'You can't simulate everything.' Fifty years ago, tinkering with gadgets was routine for people drawn to engineering and invention, and making refinements with your own hands means 'you have to be extremely self-critical,' says Richard Sennett, whose book The Craftsman examines the importance of skilled manual labor. Even in highly abstract fields, like the design of next-generation electronic circuits, some people believe that hands-on experiences can enhance creativity. 'You need your hands to verify experimentally a technology that doesn't exist,' says Mario Paniccia, director of Intel's photonics technology lab."
Easy! (Score:5, Funny)
Digitize your hands and use them in your digital environment.
What... no good?
Digital environments (Score:5, Funny)
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Perhaps, but then you're limited to eight bits.
Re:Digital environments (Score:4, Funny)
I count ten bits, personally. Are you Yakuza, by any chance?
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duh, you're missing the sign and parity bits.
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Simple Reason (Score:5, Insightful)
Modeling doesn't actually model everything, and an unknown factor can easily arise. It's easy to design a product, but hard to actually design one that works the first time around flawlessly.
Craftsmen are still needed in meat-space.
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Close... people can still do something that model's can't do yet -- understand the problem and want to solve it. Someday....
And... for nerds I get, but - this is news?
Hand Generated Work is Necessary in All Fields (Score:5, Insightful)
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An old prof of mine used to say "Never trust a digital meter, they lie with a straight face!"
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I find interesting parallels between this and computational biology especially on the molecular level. Maybe not parallels so much as reverse. Trying to figure out the folds of a complex protein, RNA mollecule, lipid layers, and especially interactions between two or more very often involves computational modeling. With millions or in some cases, damn near infinity possible permutations, you can't get very far by hand. In a lot of cases, even several computers won't do it. That's the reason for folding
Re:Hand Generated Work is Necessary in All Fields (Score:5, Insightful)
It's true that in the world of building design as well that designing solely with computer allows you to overlook flaws with a design, and that a physical model is still the best way to test design.
It's also true that you can't sketch an idea in AutoCad, and that the beginnings of a design in any field should be sketched/modelled. It's almost as if when something is conceived on computer it's automatically granted legitimacy.
I'm sorry but you remind me of some of the older teachers i had when studying architecture, they always repeated the same without having a clue of what they were talking about.
First of all: AutoCad equals a computer as much as a protractor equals hand drawing. Sure, you can't sketch a design using a protractor and a right angle ruler. This debate between computer/hand drawing, hand modeling is pretty useless. Fundamentally the limitations of a computer are 'input' and 'output' (since the computer per se can handle data much better than paper). With a keyboard, mouse, digital stylus and 3d controllers, you can not only emulate paper and hand modeling but surpass it by a long way and try different approaches to designing, like scripting or using parametric relationships between components.
The fact is that there is a lot of software for designing and does a much better job that hand drawing/modeling. For example, try manually designing an environmentally friendly building. You've got software that displays real time the shadow range the building will cast, thermal analysis, lighting analysis, acoustic response, much more, and all in the initial stages of design, so you can try different layouts quickly, and see what works better.
The only advantage of a physical model is that if you don't have good spatial perception, you'll understand the space better than looking at a flat screen since you are looking at it in stereo, but you can always buy some stereo goggles, Boeing use them when designing.
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Good argument, but I think the other guys have a good argument for physical modeling as well. Maybe I'm going one step further with physical testing, but I think it's related. I'll go to the Mythbusters example. On that show how often does a physical test reveal something completely overlooked in the sketch phase? All the time I think. It just seems like unless you have limitless imagination, i.e. you can write a super complicated software program with zero bugs and all errors trapped without testing, I jus
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Warning (Score:2, Informative)
Soldering Party? (Score:1)
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You'd think if they were teaching soldering, they would start with how to hold the things. About the only way you could do it worse is to grab the actual business end!
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The "art of soldering," maybe -- but what soldering technique involves gripping the iron in one's fist, as if to stab someone in the back with a dagger? You'd think if they were teaching soldering, they would start with how to hold the things. About the only way you could do it worse is to grab the actual business end!
That's the first thing I noticed when I opened the article! Using that sort of grip is a very clear indication that thee isn't much real hacking going on there. Sort of like the electronics equivalent of tee-ball.
Just give it time ... (Score:2, Interesting)
Yet.
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Ever.
A simulation is only as good as its input data and ability to map output data to meatspace. A computer simulation of anything in the real world, even if the simulation itself is perfect, will always be limited by its ability to acquire data from to real world to model, and the ability to implement the model physically in the real world. Going from analog to digital and back to analog always loses something in the translation.
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Correct, but let's not be so anal. It is possible that limited simulations can be developed that could completely destroy manual design in certain fields (since you don't need to know quantum mechanics or the gravitational pull of Pluto to design a bridge). I would say that it is reasonably likely that in the next 20 years we will see classical physics simulation engines become the primary design *and* testing ground for most engineering products, with the exception of testing critical projects like bridg
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Americans don't do that. Third world people do. (Score:5, Insightful)
Americans can't afford to waste their time doing things with their hands. That's what low wage countries are for. Americans have to concentrate on the profitable things, like banking, hedge funds, and real estate speculation. You can't get rich with machine shop skills. Or even with the skills to set up an production line. You don't get any respect for that.
A few years ago, I ran a DARPA Grand Challenge team. We had some bright young people with an interest in robotics and the ability to make complex hardware work. Where are they now? One is running a hedge fund in Santa Fe. One went to Bermuda to work for an offshore financial operation. One went to a search engine company. One headed a group developing software inside the iPhone. They're all making lots of money, but they're not doing robotics. They can't afford to.
Yes, it's sad, Yes, it's leading to the decline of the United States. But if you're young and have college loans to pay off, what can you do?
Re:Americans don't do that. Third world people do. (Score:5, Insightful)
A very profitable area for young students to go into is "Intellectual Property" law, which field is also hastening the decline of the United States.
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Are you lamenting that they can't make any money tinkering with complex hardware? I built parts of the TDRSS(Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System) for NASA while working for TRW. These Satellites have been in orbit for 25 years, just about the only thing I have ever built that is still in use. In 1983, I was paid $5.39/hour. I took a pay-cut from the Army to go to work for TRW. Now, I make 10 times that. Is someone going to pay me what I make now to build components for TRW? Probably not.
Just as
You are kidding right? (Score:5, Insightful)
What you do, is build stuff and fuck the rest of them.
It's that simple.
Perhaps you can't do it on the job --that's the case with me. You can however, do what you want to on your time and the skills you build will provide value for you later on.
There is absolutely no place on this earth where the simple equation for wealth, which is innovation applied to labor over time, does not apply.
We are being told it does not apply here, that we are a consumer economy and that the world would crash if we quit consuming shit.
Don't believe one word of it.
We have the trade deficits today, the economic trouble we do today, for one reason and one only:
We don't carry our weight as Americans. Until we fix that, we will slowly be owned by the rest of the world perfectly willing to carry theirs.
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What you do, is build stuff and fuck the rest of them.
It's that simple.
In the GP's example of the DARPA grand challenge, I'm not sure it's quite that simple.
I mean, if you're competing in the DARPA urban challenge [darpa.mil], you need several things.
A system combining a high precision GPS with high precision inertial measurement and an Omnistar subscription. Budget: $80,000
A Velodyne HD LIDAR [velodyne.com] - Budget $75,000
Five count SICK LMS-291 LIDARs - budget 5*$7000 = $35,000
38 motivated, intelligent engineers, programmers and administrators for 1 year. 38*$50,000 = $1,900,000
I'm sure in the comput
No disagreement (Score:2)
on things at the scale of the DARPA bit.
However, that does not extend to "cutting edge" technologies in general. Of course, with computers it's easy to do stuff as it's mostly virtual.
Other examples include, prototypes for product design, micro controller applications, niche products to be consumed locally, infrastructure things (farming water systems, wireless, your own shop with lots of capability, etc...), a small business of contract work, and others.
Also there is the enabling factor.
Let's say somebody
Are Americans from another planet? (Score:2, Interesting)
Take the "planet" bit with appropriate humour, but I'm serious about the rest.
In the fairly developed nation of planet Earth that I come from (UK), the majority of people no longer work at whatever job they can get, regardless of interest. The *vast* majority have at least some passing interest in their line of work (and that's how they choose it in the first place), even in jobs that some might think of as "menial", in the services, or building site labour, counter and cleaning staff. Many of these jobs
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Fortunate then that not everyone is out to get rich. In case you forget, financial gain is not the only possible motivation.
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Why is that a bad thing? It's not just about individuals chasing money, it's about companies *gasp* hiring intelligent people to do important things like manage large amounts of resources. Their choices aren't contributing to the decline of the
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Yes, it's sad, Yes, it's leading to the decline of the United States. But if you're young and have college loans to pay off, what can you do?
I don't believe that most people have no choice. I went to a relatively expensive state university, and was able to pay my own tuition by working hard in resturaunts and landscaping, without any help from my parents and without borrowing any money. Granted, had I gone to Harvard it would have been more expensive, but a lot of other decent schools like Ohio State would have been a lot cheaper. And a lot of better students could have gotten scholarships. I think its more often a matter of people selling o
yep, thats great! (Score:5, Funny)
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How are you posting to Slashdot if not already at a computer screen?
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Interpolation vs. extrapolation (Score:1, Interesting)
If the device being modeled is already well understood, then computer modeling saves time and money. Giant aircraft are almost never prototyped any more. They are designed, modeled and tested on the computer. The first physical plane is ready to fly.
Another thing computer modeling is good for is trying many different things. For instance, in microwave class we used to build a microstrip amplifier. It was a real pain and not all students were successful. The students get much better experience using Mi
I work on embedded systems... (Score:4, Insightful)
Gene
The First boing 777 flew (Score:5, Interesting)
There was a time when you would make a physical model to see how it will behave, but no longer. They sort of do it with cars but only for the sake of styling. Aerodynamic models are more accurate and styling is more important so there is no need for wind tunel testing.
Modern Cad pakages like SolidWorks, Catia, ProE are amazing and almost a comodity.
Skilled manual labour is a beautiful thing, but is becoming more distant
I am sure there is a SciFi script in this.
G
Re:The First boing 777 flew (Score:4, Interesting)
And I'm sure some designers ended up making small scale mocks, or partial mockups of maintenance bays to make sure everything was easily serviceable and stuff.
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they still needed the physical test to confirm.
No, they (the FAA) still wanted the physical test for certification.
ProE etc (Score:5, Interesting)
Luckily the project manager was "old school" and had an SLA made which showed up the problem before the big-cost plastic injection molding dies were made.
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They sort of do it with cars but only for the sake of styling.
The number of prototypes for a new car has gone down significantly, but they're still used at all stages of the design process. Noise/vibration/harshness tests are one big area where models aren't accurate enough yet. Endurance tests are also still done.
The aviation industry is ahead in this regard because it's insanely expensive to build a prototype of an airliner.
Every step has to be made, at its time (Score:1)
Handmade work is still in use, but good designing practices has taught us that it's easier to reduce 'common mistakes' with the use of automated tools at some stages. You can't make all step of modern microelectronics by hand and still be competitive (you'd use much more manpower and your product certainly will be delivered too late), as you can't use a rule and a pencil to design a modern building.
The perfect workflow (or perhaps the more efficient) is to use the best tools available to reach an advanced p
I'm laying out boards right now (Score:3, Interesting)
Rest assured, laying out a complex circuit board is still very much a "hands on" process, because interacting with the software is a real pain.
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I always thought the "autoroute" was a joke, but i guess it can get some work done. Nothing like experience to keep traces away from noisy signals.
Design programs are a great tool to those that already have hands on experience, the experiences helps avoid common mistakes. Such as tollerances in cad programs, bolts in places that keep you from assembling the piece.
Think this is like the rest of real life, start out with a pencil, and move up when you have some experience under the belt.
Isaac Asimov (Score:5, Interesting)
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Okay, but what about gorillas and ravens, which are intelligent and have hands, or elephants, which are intelligent and have a trunk with functionality equivalent to opposable thumbs?
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Gorillas and ravens didn't have the alien intervention that we did.
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If I'm not mistaken, Isaac Asimov wrote in Foundation's Edge that the reason why humans have developed a technological society is because we have hands. Dolphins and whales have sizeable brains but they lack hands.
Actually, technological society came to being because we needed tools (weapons included) so much and so often that crafting them gradually became so elaborate, leading to concept of keeping objects from environment, carefully picked and/or processed, in one's possession. Early humans assigned value to their tool making efforts, which led to keeping valuable assets (very useful, but too slow to make on the spot if urgently needed), which led to concept of property, which led to concept of trade, which led to
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Chimps have hands. What have they done?
Simulation gives us more (Score:5, Informative)
A computer model is far more useful than a piece of hardware on your desk. It does more and costs less.
One important aspect is measurements. There is no easy way to do any meaningful measurements in a microwave circuit unless it is specifically designed for that (and for nothing else.) However a CST or Ansoft model allows you to measure the field, or the current, or whatever else you want in any point of the model (and of the space around it, if you build an antenna, for example.) These measurements will be totally non-invasive, as opposed to a real-world probe that you would have to use. Some RF designs require hundreds of iterations before you achieve the desired compromise between all your design goals. Doing this in a computer will take a month. Doing this in metal will take 10 years.
Another advantage is in parametric design. Usually models are not hardcoded, but defined with a set of parameters (Excel for Autodesk Inventor, built-in spreadsheets for SolidWorks, etc.) You can manipulate these parameters and [almost] instantly see their effect. To do this in a real-world hardware you'd need weeks and thousands of dollars.
Per my current practice, the model is built only as a working prototype, when the design has been done and validated on the computer. This model can be also used as a sales demo, but the main purpose of building it is to verify the calculations, and the quality of the overall design (such as "can it be assembled?")
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I agree completely. SPICE printouts make an excellent cover for the bottom of my bird cage.
Porn (Score:1)
What is a skill? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Yes Daddy, it's something you know with your skin."
Some Thoughts (Score:2, Insightful)
If we continue to use expert systems to design things using coded models of behavior, we need to be cautious about interpreting the output of those models. Airplane wings are wind-tunnel tested to see that they conform to the model's predictions. This is well and good. But as more complex non linear chaotic objects are modeled, one needs to be crucially aware of the model as being just a "model" not the actual object (with all it's nua
If the model doesn't tell you (Score:2)
Technology is used because it has proven itself to be better for the task. Yes! you will have mistakes and discrepencies. But today's models are only unhelpful when they are misus
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I wouldn't plant a farm using a mule,
Mules don't pollute.
I wouldn't write software without a compiler,
Yet it's still useful, sometimes, to look at the output of that compiler -- and necessary, sometimes (in very limited situations) to write software without a compiler. Think bootloaders, tight loops in video games or microcontrollers, etc.
and I wouldn't walk the 30 kilometers to work every day.
I do walk the half mile or so, though. At least that way, I get some exercise.
I'm not saying we should all bring back the old ways, but it's useful to know what was (and is still) good about them.
I don't like doing a lot of arithmetic in my head. That s
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I seriously doubt that farts and shit rival the carbon emissions from even one tractor. Or combine.
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I wouldn't write software without a compiler,
Fortunately there are still some CE students out there who are learning assembly and machine code, and designing basic processors from silicon. Without that knowledge base, who do you think is going to write new compilers and design completely new hardware architectures?
I think the general rule is that using tools to abstract complex design tasks is great, as long as there are people on the team who truly understand the tools and their outputs. Otherwise, we risk a major problem if the tool or its outp
beyond CAD (Score:1)
analog integrated circuit designer (Score:3, Interesting)
Having said that, we can get too dependent on the tools. Sometimes for certain circuits we learn that if this line cross that point, we're good. But it's too easy to forget why it would cross that point or even what the line measures. Today more than ever it's essential that good designer's understand what's physically going on. The tool can't truly model everything accurately, and even if it could it can't truly run all possible scenarios even with today's compute resources (my top level sims run for about a week). So the tools have limitations and we must be aware of them. A guy with a wrench can't assume everything is hexagonal, or that everything should be torqued in the first place.
Also, software tools can pidgin-hole us. They are written with a certain design paradigm in mind. That might represent good practice over a long period of time and over many different types of circuits, but eventually you'll hit limitations. You need to understand those limitations to build a better tool. We need to know when it's time to shift paradigms. Now new paradigms come along before the old ones even get broken in because we're working with tens of nanometers for features sizes.
Anyway, this is just the perspective from the integrated circuit industry (and specifically on the analog side). But I suspect that in this world of so much device integration that we'll really need computers to keep track of all the amazing richness of technology that these new widgets contain.
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Well, I think... (Score:2)
a sketch pad counts as manual labor, and I don't see sketch pads along with white boards going away anytime soon. And any decent designer has a sketch pad.
But please don't throw away your rulers and compasses if what you are drawing is the final blueprint.
It's a double edged sword... (Score:3, Interesting)
I see plenty of ads in Craigslist for artists, but for the most part, they also involve your ability to code and require experience with very expensive software (hard to afford for a traditional artist trying to move INTO digital). But the coding thing is ridiculous.
Seems to me that all they're really doing is looking for a way to get one employee to do three jobs for one set salary. Either that, or they're just clueless, and think every picture or painting starts out in Photoshop, and THEN artists move into sketching the image to paper.
But most ironically, a lot of them will AVOID hiring traditional artists for the same reason they're supposedly looking to hire them for.
Use Simulation When Appropriate, Ditto Prototyping (Score:2, Interesting)
I agree that there's a place for simulation, but some commenters seem to think that it is sufficient. So Boeing built and successfully flew a 777; that says nothing about how easy it is for the pilot to use the controls, or the mechanic to repair a tailfin assembly, or for a passenger to put their pants back on after using the restroom. Can a simulation package replace feedback from a pilot's attempt to use a control panel? (For that matter, DOES it even make sense to simulate this with a CAD model? We
relevant (Score:2)
I find this article relevant, as I am currently in the process of doing a "hands-on" test design of a modern CPU, using solderless breadboards and individual transistors.
It's the size of a football field and won't run reliably at clock speeds higher than 0.004 GHz, but hey.
Mythbusters and such (Score:1)
I think Mythbusters is a nice example of how hands on is a good thing when it comes to this sort of thing. I can see it being helpful to a lot of people.
On the other hand personally, as much as I love to know how things work, I've never been one to like having to constantly jack with stuff... hardware or otherwise. Maybe I'm just lazy... but I'd rather read about it and do it on a computer if I can.
Critical even for electricl engineers (Score:2)