The Importance of Computer Aided Design in the Near Future
Ever since the first human requested that another person make something for them, there has existed a need to be able to convey some level of technical manufacturing instructions. While words might be necessary to express that information, it was likely not long into that prehistoric conversation that someone reached for a stick or used their finger to draw a picture in the dirt. This drawing of such pictures has been a necessary component of nearly every technological advance that human-kind has realized.
Picture drawing has long been used by humans for art and decoration but it is an entirely different application when that picture is used as a conceptual model of an object with the purpose of conveying not just what the object looks like, but how it is made and how its attributes relate to one another. This second use of drawings has been mostly the domain of those involved in designing or manufacturing products. Thus, the general public has not had much of a use for it directly. This is likely to change.
With the advent of 3D printers and with other CNC manufacturing techniques moving beyond specialist manufacturing shops into people’s homes, the necessity for people who are able to create the images and models that are fed to those devices will only grow. The level of adoption of 3D printers, laser cutters, desktop CNC mills and other similar devices at home would currently be described as an early adopter hobbyist stage. This is much like personal computing was in the late 1970s and early 1980s. As such, those hobbyists currently learn the computer drafting and 3D modeling that they require in order to make their machines work but there are likely levels of complexity that is never reached by most of those hobbyists.
As the capabilities of these machines increase and as their prices decrease, the demand from their use will outstrip the supply of those who have the skills to create the models required to run them. There may be a level of literacy developed among the general public on the operation of these machines but just as a computer programmer can get more out of a computer than the average computer user, someone with more advanced computer design skills will be able to get more out of these CNC machines.
This isn’t to say that the industries that have traditionally used computer-aided design will be seeing a decrease in its use. All of the manufacturers and architects that currently use computer aided design in their business will continue to do so and with more architects and civil engineers using 3D renders to sell and describe their buildings and infrastructure and with more manufacturers moving from 2D prints to the 3D models necessary for CNC manufacturing the demand for computer-aided design will continue to grow there as well.
Therefore, digital design will continue to play the part of its fore-bearers of hand drawn blueprints and sketches in the sand with helping to push human innovation.
Stephen Heckman, 2019
The above was written as part of the application for the full ride Build Dakota scholarship. I was awarded the scholarship.
On a Road Trip from Fargo to Denver
Hand rolled cotton clouds, bottoms flattened as if pressed onto a glass table, race their shadows across the undulating green and gold fields shimmering in mid-August heat. Dotted here and there are some large enough to drop their contents in World War II bombing runs on this particular field or that shelter-belted farmhouse.
The dog and I travel underneath by pickup truck on two-lane back roads to avoid the Interstate on our long trek. I enjoy the sweet summer South Dakota air; she lays curled in the front seat, sleeping, with her nose on her paws. Our journey has been long enough to wear her excitement for new sights and smells and she has succumbed to the rhythm of the road.
One of the marching rain showers catches us, starting with few but fat droplets thumping on the hood of the truck. Quickly, the thumps grow and blend into a dull rumble as the rain comes harder and harder. She picks her head up from her paws, but does not uncurl, as the rain’s intensity causes me to slow the truck. Not knowing enough to be concerned, but curious; the slowing vehicle likely renewing her anticipation of new things to sniff.
The sky does not darken with the growing downpour but rather the bright afternoon sun peeking under the localized offending cloud keeps it bright. Harder and harder still the rain comes, blending first the fields, the road, and then even the hood of the truck into a blank bright nothingness. A vision only previously seen in the "default world" of science fiction shows about minds being plugged into computers. The truck becomes encased in all directions.
Forced to slow further and stop the truck, I feel for the rumble of the tires on the gravel at the side of the road, it being the only indication that the world outside hasn’t been replaced by a vast infinite whiteness. The windshield wipers, turned on high, beat a valiant but futile rhythm against the deluge. The dog sits up fully and looks out the window. Perhaps she is as entranced by the wonder of the bright blankness outside as I am or, perhaps, this is just another experience that she does not understand between the punctuations of “food”, or “stick”, or “walk” that she does.
The rain abates in seeming minutes but likely seconds slowly morphing the bright blankness back into the same country landscape that was before. Nothing outwardly appears changed except the newly wetted vegetation on the roadside sparkling in the sunlight. I pause for a second, slightly unsteadied after this brief vision of the matrix, and then gather myself to pull back onto the road to continue our journey.
A few minute down the road we pass a soaked farmer trundling down the road on his un-cabbed tractor. He may be stoically resigned or furiously annoyed but is likely feeling something much different than my wonder in the recent experience. The dog watches him as we shift to the opposite lane to pass and then curls again to return to her interrupted nap.
Stephen Heckman, 2019
Manual Wheelchair Improvement Proposal
Purpose
The purpose of a wheelchair is to give people with permanent or temporary mobility problems a way to be transported either under their own power or with the assistance of another person.
Design Problem
The problem is that when the wheelchair occupant is providing the locomotion, both of their hands are required to either propel the wheelchair in a straight line or to perform small radius turns. This makes manual wheelchairs impossible to operate by someone who only has use of one arm/hand and inconvenient for those with the use of both arms when they happen to be using one arm for a task other than propelling the wheelchair.
Proposed Redesign
The redesign would connect both drive wheels of the wheelchair to a central gearbox using axels and shafts. This gearbox would have three settings that could be selected by the wheelchair user while they are operating the wheelchair. One setting would be to couple both wheels together so that pushing either of them forward or backward would drive the other in the same direction. This would move the whole wheelchair forward or backward in a straight line. The second setting would couple the wheels together in such a way that pushing either wheel in either direction would spin the other one in the opposite direction thereby spinning the wheelchair in place. The final setting would be to completely uncouple the wheels from each other so that the wheelchair would operate just as wheelchairs do now.
Stephen Heckman 2020