When we started working on GrabCAD Teams, we wanted to make it easier for any Engineer, Designer or anyone else to collaborate. As a first experiment of our 3D Viewer and annotator, I began working with GrabCADr Ramses Chavez and he began modelling based on my sketches and comments. That was June - now I have finally gotten my hands on the final product, 3D printed in ceramic by Figulo.
The idea literally hit me one June morning and lucky for me, I had pen and paper nearby to write it down (always have it nearby - always). The purpose behind the weave is that you keep your hands cool and the liquid hot while retaining a unique aesthetic look. The trouble was that this type of design was nearly impossible to accomplish with standard ceramic forming techniques. It was possible via Figulo's ceramic printing process - finding the right design that was printable and had a low surface area (Figulo charges by the surface area) was key.
One of the hardest parts about collaboration is finding the right partner. Because we have such a great variety of Design Challenges and the Profiles+Project portfolios can show everyone what you can do and how well you can work, this was never a problem. Ramses had won a number of awards for his submissions in past competitions and I really liked his taste and skills. I showed him drawings and immediately sparked a great conversation about how to make this happen.
Inset: An original drawing I shared with Ramses explaining a point about tolerances....
Main image: A thank-you note to the team.
The first iterations of GrabCAD's 3D viewer were missing a few important aspects. Placing a pin and writing comments was helpful, but often, whole regions needed to be highlighted. Being able to create small sketches, arrows or diagrams over the existing image became really important. When I wanted to show something that way, I had to take screenshots of a particular view of the Weave Cup and use Photoshop to draw or write something over it. Measuring the item was crucial too, to insure that the cup were within the required tolerances.
A few internal documents about the problems we were seeing....
So we added a Ruler and then later Sketch Mode. Had we had something like these tools, we could have created the Weave cup in 2 days instead of 2 weeks. Had we brought on Figulo quickly, we could have had a finished printed product in a week, perhaps two. And for a business, even with few skills in CAD, it is possible to bring an idea to market so much faster by keeping everyone on the same page, saving you time, money and problems.
You can check out the cup here or view it yourself below!
