With the rapid pace of technological change upon us, industrial designers may be wondering what the future holds for their careers. Derek Cicero, KeyShot’s VP of Products and Strategy, discussed that and much more in a recent interview with the Industrial Design Society of America (IDSA).
Here are some highlights from the conversation:
- Designers are embracing the power of making decisions in 3D.
With thousands of KeyShot clients around the world, Derek frequently discusses the design process with large and small companies. He’s seeing them enter a new phase: It’s no longer enough to know how to use 3D tools; industrial designers are reusing 3D assets for manufacturing, packaging, and marketing — collaborating outside of the ID team and showing the cross-functional value of their work. “Our customers have realized that KeyShot gives you the ability to do all those things from one asset,” Derek said.
- 3D visuals provide big cost and time savings at big companies.
KeyShot’s larger clients are “really pushing the envelope in terms of all the ways KeyShot can be used,” Derek explained. Not only are 3D visuals replacing product photography, companies are embracing the power of 3D to speed up the product development process. Digital design reviews, in which KeyShot users share 3D concepts across teams, (no rendering required, thanks to KeyShot Web), help better decisions get made without having to create a physical prototype. And when a prototype is needed, more companies are using KeyShot files to print in-house on 3D printers.
- With lots of new 3D rendering tools available, designers should focus on streamlining their workflow.
“It’s an embarrassment of riches in terms of all the cool tools that exist,” Derek said. “With all these options, sometimes people can end up relying too much on specialist tools, which causes problems in your process. CAD data is generally pretty heavy; it’s pretty large data. Moving it from tool to tool can be relatively tricky sometimes.”
There is a lot of change in the 3D space, he added: “It’s important to know that tools come and go all the time. Some large corporations shift their 3D strategy every couple of years. So do you want to spend a bunch of time learning a tool that might be gone in two years? Probably not.”
Read the rest of the interview on the IDSA website.
3D visual by Jama Jurabaev
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