This year we had the pleasure to work together with our talented students on campus again which was truly inspiring! We are very pleased of the results and hope our students carry with them a lot of experience and knowledge which can be utilised in their future challenges.
This year I would like to uphold three projects in specific; VNBC MAKARA, Subway Generator and Visitors’ Centre. These projects, I believe, encapsulate the meaning and essence of this course, which is; in an efficient and elegant manner automate vast amount of repetitive work through thoughtful modeling and scripting strategies.
The course aims at utilizing the advancement of digitalization to develop products that are tailored to match specific customer needs. The aim is to practice the ability to build automated design frameworks from the interpretation of customer requirements, through design and manufacturing using numerical controlled machines (e.g. 3D-printing or CNC-machines) for testing of physical prototypes.
Students where able to apply various techniques in order to develop production automation for both machining and drawings, but also complete robotic offline programming.
This year we are only presenting the top results without a particular rating and order. This is due to the projects being difficult to compare since the number of members for each project differ from 1 to 3. What is similar for each project however and what is in our opinion the main factor for their top rating is the understanding of how to only automate the repetitive tasks in an efficient and user friendly way. Each one of the below projects are great template of how a design automation project should be structured and implemented.
For the second year we were forced to give this course in distance mode. Because of committed and hardworking students and teacher staff we were able to generate great results this year as well. As always, I am honoured, humbled and thankful. Great job everyone!
For the first time the course Design Automation of Customised Products has been given in the Linköping University. The course has been the results of years of research and experience, especially due to the results generated in the project e-FACTORY which is a produktion2030 and vinnova financed research project.
The course aims at utilizing the advancement of digitalization to develop products that are tailored to match specific customer needs. The aim is to practice the ability to build automated design frameworks from the interpretation of customer requirements, through design and manufacturing using numerical controlled machines (e.g. 3D-printing or CNC-machines) for testing of physical prototypes.
Students where able to apply various techniques in order to develop production automation for both machining and drawings, but also complete robotic offline programming. We are delighted by these results and look forward to further enhance in this topic.
This year we had extraordinary level of great projects, despite the current circumstances. Having hard time to only choose 5 projects, we are going for top 10!
10th place
This project shows a mature combination between automation and manual design. The results are telling where a lot of repetitive process is automated for a relatively complex geometry.
9th place
Based on a manual drawn track, the structural-elements of the roller coaster are automatically put in place. Useful and exciting piece of automation!
8th Place
An automation routine which allows the user to create mass-customised furniture which also takes into account efficient manufacturing. A well executed project.
7th place
A great automation project! The most inspiring aspects of this projects is the fact that aesthetics is automatically generated.
6th place
A great configuration project which allows the user to put together various modules which ultimately lead to a very large amount of possible variants.
5th place
Truly great project which allows automation on complex user unique designs. The routine is very robust and thus able to produce solutions that take into consideration manufacturability and assembly.
4th Place
Tremendous automation and hands down best project in terms of mathematics applied. The routine creates the village and lays down the structural-elements by making sure that there are no collisions.
3rd place
Useful and user-friendly train configurator that is able to produce flexible interiors based on an excel GUI. The execution and the results are very professional!
2nd place
Never judge a book by its cover 😉 The poster does not do justice to how great of a project this is. Incredibly robust interface allows complete flexibility in kitchen design. Awesome work! Make sure you watch the video!
1st place
I could write a lot in order to mention all that is great with this project. All from attention to detail to flexibility of automation to the completeness of the results. For me, this is the best and most inspiring project for 2020.
To put it lightly, 2020 has been a tough year. I am therefore especially and incredibly proud of the students for delivering one of the best results we have had in the design automation course. Despite all the challenges and the obstacles you have been able to produce and deliver. I am humbled and inspired by your dedication. Looking forward to see more of your progress in your final year.
This group is able to produce a complex model with minimal user-constraints and by utilising a user-friendly configuration technique. The user is able to intuitively select where various geometries should be placed and the automation routine then creates the geometries based on user input. Perfectly balanced!
The is the most intuitive project idea, EVER, in the history of the course. How about costume made instructions depending on the configuration of the desk? Great idea and execution.
Tree house configurator
Although this project can be precieved as only “a fun idea”, it is very cleverly exectuted. Upon user choice, the time consuming processes are automatically instantiated based on a few number of geometries, namely planks. Great work!
Results from the course Collaborative Multi-Disciplinary Design Optimisation course.
These groups represent those who have shown examplary understanding of MDO and Design Automation and as a group were able to successfully divide and execute the various tasks given to them by the course coordinators.
This project contains everything we want to communicate in regards to design automation. A design automation framework should be intuitive, interactive, easy to use, make sense, create value and ONLY automate the repetitive and time consuming processes in design. I believe that this group has been able to achieve just that. The results are impressive and inspiring.
This final post concludes the results from this year’s product modelling. Once again, it has been a privilege to work with you all and your hard work and dedication is a source of inspiration for all of us at the faculty. Have a great summer!
Many of my colleagues insist that design and art cannot be automated. In my opinion, this project proves them wrong. Fine balance between aesthetics and code. Well balanced and perfectly executed.
This is an incredibly cool project with a lot of future potential. Download a map from google maps and then automatically build a Dam. Even though the model is conceptual it still generates a lot of information in regards to how much material (dirt, rocks etc.) needs to be removed and what an initial cost could land on. There is a lot of potential value for being able to effectively generate infrastructure such as dams, roads and bridges in this fashion.
This project is the embodiment of how few parts (only three here!) can automatically build unique and generic models. Manual work is minimal, just as it should be. One of our favourite projects this year!
A great project with a lot of attention to details. The most impressive part of this project is how they have been able to automatically instantiate tiles on double curved roof surfaces. Brilliant!
To be completely honest, this project doesn’t look like much 🙂 What makes it great is the practical designs and outputs and the thus the potential value it could actually create. It’s decently the project which has the closest time to market, this year! Great work!
This application is able to assist designers in generating 3D models of industrial sized greenhouses in a fraction of time compared to manual CAD. Incredibly well executed project where design automation enables a process otherwise not possible!
Two years ago, similar stadium projects were found in top 5. The level of project-quality is constantly improving and a great work like this where thousands of features are automatically put in place, is found at 8th place. Terrific work!
9th place goes to this house configurator which is able to generate a unique solution that can be visualised for the customer and the generated BOM-list helps the company to make a cost estimation. Great work!
It was really hard to pick out only 10 projects this year. We struggled a long time and removed 5 really good ones and in the end we still ended up with 11 projects. So this year it’s a tie in top 10. Similar for both projects is that repetitive CAD is automated and many features are automatically put in right context. Good job!
To date, this is the best student project I have seen, in all categories. Multi objective Industrial stairs optimisation and automated instantiation from scratch. Absolutely fantastic.
Results from the course Collaborative Multi-Disciplinary Design Optimisation course.
These groups represent those who have shown examplary understanding of MDO and Design Automation and as a group were able to successfully divide and execute the various tasks given to them by the course coordinators.
So for the best project we have a real beast. Advanced modeling, awesome coding and great results. It has to be pointed that the project presented is not only a parameterised rubber model. All the detail such as boards and ribs are actually instantiated, which can be visualised in the video below, meaning that a bill of material (BOM) and drawings could be created to actually produce it. This fact together with incredibly complex surface models for ships which is parameterised from a small boat to a big ship is quite an undertaking.
The members in this group were clear in the beginning that they wanted to create something extraordinary. With hard work, commitment and some more hard work they’ve done just that. It has been a pleasure for us in the teaching group to follow all hard working groups and this group is this years icing on the cake.
In this project a product configurator is presented. The CAD models are no lookers but the logic created to enable interactive configuration together with the GUI is spot on. Good job!
This project is close to perfection. They’ve managed to automate a vastly complex structure. Note that the planks are not a material choice, but rather context dependent instances of actual Plank templates. The detail level is insane.
This project shows in an unique way how automation can be used to create complex structures, as in this case unique user-defined trees. It was a privilege to watch this group evolve during the course.
Repetitive Design 