Additive Manufacturing - The biggest change to Industrial Design this Century

My first experience of professional design was in 1992, at a graphic design studio in Manchester. At this time they designed logos and graphics by hand, on a drawing board.

I started my career as an Industrial Designer just before the millennium and was among some of the first designers to use CAD. This was a monumental shift in the design process and gave designers the tools to take their designs directly to production. At this time, I saw many of my peers making the shift from 2D drawings to 3D design.

Until now, there hasn’t been another change of this magnitude.

Traditional CAD restricts us to known geometries, resulting in robust but nowhere near optimum designs. Generative design and topology optimization close this gap by introducing evolutionary algorithms, optimizing designs to better fit their purpose.

This computer aided, algorithmic design is not new and has been around since the 1970s. However, the practice has been accelerated over the last few years due to the advancement of additive manufacturing. In fact, we are at the point where AM has become a viable alternative to mass produced manufacturing techniques such as molding/casting and CNC.

Additive Manufacturing can produce almost anything. This gives us the opportunity to completely rethink the design approach. Instead of having production and material limitations, we can focus on designing products that seamlessly fit the body and the environment around us. This will result in a massive change to the look and feel of products and I’m excited to welcome all the organic form factors this new technology will bring.

#additivemanufacturing has already had a big impact at a concept level, but from what I have learnt during my time at HP 3D Printing , the advancements in speed and quality are about to make this technology very mainstream.?

As my peers adopted CAD at the start of my career - we too need to stay ahead and leverage from this exciting next season of design.

The abstract images are created in Grasshopper and rendered in Cinema 4D by Alex Sasov

See more image here: https://www.behance.net/nikleedesign