Characterising the Affordances and Limitations of Common Prototyping Techniques to Support the Early Stages of Product Development

Self Cite

While extensive modelling - both physical and virtual - is imperative to develop right-first-time products, the parallel use of virtual and physical models gives rise to two interrelated issues: the lack of revision control for physical prototypes; and the need for designers to manually inspect, measure, and interpret modifications to either virtual or physical models, for subsequent update of the other. The Digital Twin paradigm addresses similar problems later in the product life-cycle, and while these digital twins, or the “twinning” process, have shown significant value, there is little work to date on their implementation in the earlier design stages. With large prospective benefits in increased product understanding, performance, and reduced design cycle time and cost, this paper explores the concept of using the Digital Twin in early design, including an introduction to digital twinning, examination of opportunities for and challenges of their implementation, a presentation of the structure of Early Stage Twins, and evaluation via two implementation cases.

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Early Stage Digital Twins for Early Stage Engineering Design

Jones¹,

Snider²,

Kent³

et al. 2019

Self Cite

“…Prototyping technique "how well does the technique meet the required level of detail?" (Mathias et al, 2018) 6 Material "These are preliminary prototypes constructed with materials that are easy and fast to work with and thus facilitate explorative conversation with materials. These lowfidelity prototypes…" (Bao et al, 2018) 7…”

Section: Iced19mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Indeed, frequencies may vary, depending on the discipline and the research objectives characterizing the reviewed contributions. (Lim et al, 2006) X (Bao et al, 2018) X (Menold et al, 2017) X (Hannah et al, 2012) X X (Jensen et al, 2018) X X (Jensen et al, 2017) X (Sauer et al, 2008) X X (Bonner and Van Schaik, 1998) (Rudd et al, 1996) X X (Mathias et al, 2018) X (Mueller et al, 2014) X X (Sauer et al, 2010) X (Wall et al, 1992) X X (Hare et al, 2014) X X X…”

Section: Iced19mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Moreover, if prototypes are used for exploration purposes, recent research works suggest that "low fidelity" prototypes (i.e. rough and/or partial approximation of the final solution) should be preferred (Isa et al, 2015;Mathias et al, 2018;Ranscombe et al, 2017). In addition, it has been observed that Fidelity of prototypes should be carefully selected according to the audience to which they are destined (Elverum et al, 2016;McCurdy et al, 2006).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Unveiling the Multiple and Complex Faces of Fidelity

Fiorineschi¹,

Rotini²

2019

Fidelity is one of the most important parameters to consider when dealing with prototypes, which affect the related costs and performances. Current literature contributions often rely on generic definitions of Fidelity based on the concept of closeness. However, the review performed in this paper revealed that Fidelity is a more complex concept, which considers (at least) eight main dimensions, mutually interrelated, and potentially characterized by many other potential sub-dimensions. The identified set has been applied to an industrial case study were a real engineering prototype has been assessed in terms of Fidelity. In particular, the case study application shows how the different dimensions can be interrelated each other. Furthermore, some important research hints have been highlighted in this paper, where the identified set of Fidelity dimensions paves the way for the related future activities.

“…Physical prototyping techniques that are commonly used in these early stages include: construction kits, foam and cardboard modelling, clay modelling, and low cost FDM printing. Mathias et al (2018) consider these physical prototyping techniques on a spectrum of fidelity and reconfigurability, as shown in Figure 2. For designers, there is a decision that has to be made that trades-off quality and time when choosing a suitable technique from this spectrum (Sass & Oxman, 2006).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hybrid Prototyping: Pure Theory or a Practical Solution to Accelerating Prototyping Tasks?

Mathias¹,

Hicks²,

Snider³

2019

Self Cite

Physical prototyping is critical activity in the produce development process, but the cost and time required to produce prototypes hinders it use in the design process. Hybrid prototyping through coupling LEGO and FDM printing is presented as an approach to address these issues. After establishing the separate design rules for FDM printing and LEGO, this paper created new set of rules called Design for Fabrication (DfF) for hybrid prototyping. These cover the three main considerations (Technical, Process, and Design) that the designer and process planning must include to practically implement LEGO and FDM hybrid prototyping. The DfF rules were considered in a prototype of a computer mouse. While the fabrication time was not reduced as expected, it showed that the rules could be practically implemented in a real-world example. Additional considerations were identified that are to be included in the DfF rules.Further work is required to realise the predicted step-change reduction in fabrication time. The first approach is to leverage multiple printers to parallelise the printing. The second is to reduce fidelity while maintaining high fidelity in key regions of interest.