Tool for Teaching Physical Model Making in Product Design

Abstract

As physical prototypes and models can solve many design issues during the New Product Development (NPD) process, it has been introduced as an essential course in many design schools. With the advancement of 3D CAD technologies students find it easier to make digital models, but they find the physical prototyping and model making difficult. This difficulty arises due to lack of understanding of materials, processes and product form correlation required for physical prototyping. In order to address this issue, a tool has been developed and introduced to design students. The tool would guide them to select materials and processes, based on the product form. The tool is a matrix of variables viz. product form, processes and materials. To formulate this matrix, altogether three hundred fifty numbers of products were considered, and clustered them according to their form and processes. On this basis, possible materials have been identified for fitment and suitability of the processes. The tool has been tested with two groups of design students in the course of 'modelling and simulation'. The effectiveness of the tool has been analysed by conducting an independent t-test and also the Felder-Silverman Index of learning. It has been observed that the tool is highly effective. This paper discusses this effort in details.