Not long ago we had quite a challenge in picking the winner for the first rendering competition. Benjamin Garson and his Drill model was a favourite of many, so we took a chance to talk to the rendering star to learn more about his talent and interests.
GC: You have a mechanical engineering background. Where did you study and/or how did you career evolve into the things you are doing now?
Benjamin: I studied 5 years in La Rochelle (in the middle west on the atlantic coast of France) to grab an engineer diploma/ master degree in Industrial Systems. In 2004 I had to spend 6 months in a company for an internship ... and I am still working here, 7 years later :)
To explain my career in my company (called AMETRA - french company ~ 200 workers in France) a little bit, I started as an intern developing some sondes for Schlumberger Oildfield Services (we are suppliers and a mechanical engineer office). After my internship finished, I started to manage a few guys on developing more complex tools for Schlumberger. It happened that in 2005 I had a chance to actually be in Schlumberger to work on an innovative drilling tool for two years (always as supplier) and it was the place where I developed some skills in complex modelling.
After returning to my company I wanted to develop the support in CAD modelling and also teach CAD to all of our workmates. Today I'm still working at it and I actually teach Pro/ENGINEER, CATIA V5, CETOL 6-Sigma, TOLERANCE MANAGER & 3D VIA COMPOSER (and soon Solidworks) and I pay attention to lots of other software such as rendering softwares or other CAD... I'm very curious, plus, that's a part of my job ;)
GC: Why is Pro/Engineer your favourite software to use? In your opinion, are there any specific type of models or tasks that are best fit for working with Autodesk/SW/others?
Benjamin: If I had to give one reason, it will be that ProE is the only one (that I know) which really fits my mechanical way of thinking: functional features and sketches first, then driven dimensions according to the functional requirements. You do the job once and well - think, model, display the dimensions on the drawing (and do not have to create them AGAIN) and it's done! Mechanical design is linked to functional analysis and Pro/ENGINEER is perfect if you want to work that way, for me it's a mechanical design software not just a 3D modeller, very stable as well.
If we look at other software, I have to say that they all are good. CATIA V5 has a very powerful surface modeling workshop, solid modelling is not the best, though (pattern features are so limited compared to ProE). Solidworks looks great, user-friendly, easy-to-use, every release is fulfilled with 'geeky' features (sometimes useful but end up crashing almost all the time), however my colleagues usually have a tough time creating surface models efficient and stable. For the Autodesk solutions, from what I've seen, they seem to work nice, the strongest part being all the bridges you have between all the Autodesk suite programmes: designing/drawing in Sketchbook, modelling 3D shape on Alias, adding mechanical features and doing analysis with Inventor, rendering with Showcase and having all that without any conversion headaches, that sounds great to me.
All the software are good to me, all we need is to have the right person using it the right way and cleverly. Learning is the key point for me, yet they are only tools, they cannot think for us, and nothing will replace papersheets and pencil if you want to design fast and efficiently :)
GC: All your renderings are top-notch quality, is it something you always do as the finishing touch of the model? How much is rendering used in your everyday work?
Benjamin: Thanks :)! All the renderings I've done are not photoshop treated, I set up everything I can in the rendering software, then press 'render' button and wait until it makes it. I think, to make better renderings, you need to model all the features that would exist in real life: chamfers, fillets, helicoidal features, etc. Plus, don't forget that on cast parts all the machined surfaces must have different materials than the main body. Split your part in several sub-surfaces (meaning several materials on the same mechanical part), and you'll have the best rendering possible. There are infinite tricks if you want to do the perfect real life-like shot, but it's time consuming, therefore money consuming ;) Creating your library of materials is a good thing to do as well, because all the materials available do not necessarily suit your vision of the material. Finally, choose a nice environment with HDRI files, or create yours in 3D, find the best perspective angle, the camera position, adding some depth of field if you want to focus on one specific part and let your photographer instinct act ;)
In my everyday work, I do not use rendering as often as I'd like to, unfortunately. We have a design office in my company which manages and creates the renderings using Maxwell Render, which is a great software but it's not user-friendly and not as fast as a software like Keyshot. Making a rendering is a very good argument in marketing: a nice picture, giving the best angle of your product, and a good quality feeling, proposing various compositions for the choices of the colors or the materials without having yet launched or finished the development of the product saves you big money. It's a good way to see if the customers would be interested in your product, and make changes if necessary. Digital prototype is the future... If I could and had enough time, I would make renderings almost everyday :)
Sneak peek at Benjamin's home workspace
GC: Now our staple questions about role models in engineering and design: can you name any team or person or company whose work in engineering/product design inspires you or with whom you'd enjoy working with?
Benjamin: It's hard to say, there are so many persons, teams and companies that inspire me! I would say that companies that are design-sensitive are the ones that inspire me the most. I think design is a great value for products and I pay attention to that. Of course, top technology companies are really inspiring for all engineers, giving us the push to do our best everyday and be curious.
Individual persons who inspire me the most are designers: Scott Robertson, Daniel Simons, Raymond Loewy, Philippe Starck ... of course Da Vinci is a great example for all of us, he had so many ideas, it's crazy!
Here are some companies and their products that I like the most and would be very pleased to work with: Audi, Apple, Samsung, Sony, Tailor Made, Steiner, Ferrari, Lamborghini, KTM, Bombardier, Alstom, Bosch, Bang & Olufsen...
GC: In your opinion, the best product ever engineered/designed ?
Benjamin: Engineered: Planes - I'm like a child when I see all this steel mass flying... and it's so reliable...
Designed: tough question... I really love the lines of the Audi R8 car. And I like the design of the Apple computers... simple, great quality feelings, pure design :)
Audi R8
GC: Any product or everyday utensil that millions use today, but which you would completely redesign from scratch given an opportunity?
Benjamin: I'd say the alarm-clock. I'm one of those people who hate that thing when it rings the morning, we should re-design it to make it nicer than it currently is :)
GC: With Google Sketchup, the popularity of 3D printing and the affordability of designing and getting your own models produced, what do you think of the future of CAD in 2020? CAD to the masses? Proper engineering will still remain a hard earned skill? Computers and software will do the majority of the work?
Benjamin: I think that's good to see that people can express their ideas of their own with CAD software in an easy way. Sharing ideas is a great way to innovate and generate other ideas, we need to inspire each other and that's why when I've seen GrabCAD I found it really cool. GradCAD is, in my opinion, the best representative of that philosophy for CAD communities.
Engineering is a job and doesn't necessarily need skills but it does need knowledge. Everybody can design a product, but making it actually work is a bit harder job, and making it work well is very hard! ;) We (engineers) do not have to think about that because we can handle a CAD software, make a 3D model of the product, make sure that our product will be OK. Software are just tools that are not yet clever enough to tell you if you've made some engineering mistakes or not.
I think if we had to think about the future of CAD, it would be fulfilled with knowledge base for mechanical features, rules, analysis and of course everything would be designed to be easy-to-use (i.e. multi-touch manipulating). It seems that direct-modelling is going to be the next battle between all the CAD software sellers, so if I had a wish to make I'd like to see this direct-modelling thing rising and the ability to control the shapes by the dimensions at any time from the conception, 3D model to already created or finished sketch. That would be nice.
Looking at what the new Autodesk Sketchbook Designer 2011 can do, especially intent drawing (you sketch a shape with your pencil looking like an ellipse, and the software will create the right ellipse giving you the ability to change it as you want), it would be awesome to see this technology in a sketcher module of any CAD software: using a pencil in one hand and a 3D mouse in the other should be a good configuration to work efficiently...
A big applause to Benjamin for giving all the very professional answers and such a deep insight to his background and experience. Make sure to take a look at Benjamin's portfolio for excellent models and renderings.
