If you’re someone who designs things for a living—cars, PC cases, bicycle wheels—you need to remember one key idea:
Someone has to make your product.
You don’t know how many times I’ve been chatting with a fabricator or technician, and they bring up some part of whatever mold or subassembly they’re working with and comment on just how frustrating it is to deal with. Or it adds three extra steps and one more thing they have to remember to check during the procedure. (Usually they explain it in a more colorful manner, but this is the general idea of it.)
Or an engineer gave the machinist a computer model of a part, but because of the geometry of the model and how the machine physically works, it’s impossible to make. Think of small, sideways channels in a block of aluminum, with material overhanging the channel—you literally cannot get the machine’s drill bit in a position to carve that out without removing all the material on top of it. And since it’s aluminum, you can’t exactly put that material back.
There’s times too where someone is installing a part on an airplane, and because of where all the fasteners are placed it takes 20 extra minutes to screw in a couple of bolts. You can just barely fit a screwdriver in there, but you get maybe an eighth of a full turn before you need to reset for the next eighth of a turn.
Or you need the One Tool To Rule Them All that actually fits in the space, and if someone walks off with the one of those that you have, then you’re screwed.
There’s doing your best designing with tight spaces, and then there’s just not thinking far enough ahead.
So instead of using extra time to further optimize a design, take that time to stop and ask yourself if someone can actually make what you’re designing. Can they fit a wrench or screwdriver in there, much less a hand, to install a bolt? Can you machine a feature with a physically possible toolpath, or would you need to 3D print the part to get it? Are there finger holds on the separate parts of your mold so you can actually pull the pieces apart when it’s done?
Take a pause, and consider that you’re designing something tangible. Sure, doing this early reduces design rework and thus cost—but it also makes for a more in-sync team, nicer products, and an overall better experience for everyone. And at the end of the day, I feel like that’s what all of us are working towards.
If you think this doesn’t apply to you because you make something in the digital space…don’t worry, you’re not off the hook yet.