

Ask HN: How to mock up physical products that don't exist? - adam419

What&#x27;s a lean way of mocking up a physical product without actually building it?<p>Also, what are some ideal ways without being strong in design skills?<p>How do people typically validate physical products without the investment of building them?
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julianpye
1\. The physical product - it is actually a good idea to take a simple piece
(you can just take a piece of wood like the inventor of the Palm Pilot did)
and do an improvisation theater with it. For this you explain to a user what
it does and hand it over to them and ask them to explain to you how they use
it.

2\. The visual mockup: For me the best results have been to do a simple 3D
model and render it with Keyshot - there are rendering alternatives called
Bunkshot and some others. Basically these are 3D Rendering programs that very
easily allow you to assign materials to a product and create a high quality
render very quickly without having the very complex and advanced knowledge
required to do a VRAY render. Regarding the 3D model itself a good start is
Sketchup, formerly owned by Google.

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adam419
Sketchup - Looks exactly like what I was looking for. Seems very powerful and
easy to get started with.

Thanks a lot!!

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hurch
Using good old pen and paper or adobe ideas are a good starting point. Don't
worry if your sketches look like crayon scribbles by a 3 year old, the act of
putting your thoughts down will likely lead to more thoughts/tweaks to the
original idea. And the more you do this, the better your design skills will
get. After that, and acknowledge that you had said not to actually build it,
I'd move to putting together a basic prototype with any parts that you can get
your hands on - trade/building supplies/art and craft store/daiso/discount
store etc. The benefit of doing this is that once you/potential customers can
handle the product, you'll learn more than any visual mockup will provide and
the design will likely change again. Going through this cycle several times
will lead to a much better design.

List of visual mock up tools (free and paid):
[http://i.materialise.com/creationcorner](http://i.materialise.com/creationcorner)
[http://www.shapeways.com/tutorials/supported-
applications](http://www.shapeways.com/tutorials/supported-applications)

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crunchy_toast
From an engineering standpoint, digital prototyping is a huge time saver when
mocking up products.

If your product will be under some physical stress it is good to understand
where the weak points exist and how to negate them. If manufacturing costs
will be a major concern (eg plastic parts, tooling, and mold design) then you
need to know how to reduce them.

Autodesk Inventor is a fairly easy to use option. Ansys is much better if you
need to simulate how it will react in the real world and have a fat wallet for
their licence costs.

I just built a book press out of bubinga and stainless; Prototyping it in
Inventor allowed me to see where the weak points were in my design and make
modifications that allow it to work beyond the typical load required of a book
press.

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the906
Sorry for jumping a reply on this reply, its not connected but all the other
reply buttons are missing?..

Go check out the architecture/industrial design realm. Paper mockups, foldable
concepts, foam, clay, legos....there are a myriad of techniques to create the
physical form.

Then if its electornic you have arduino/sparkcore/etc. etc. Sooo many ways
that you can move through, whether its purely visual, 3d printing, etc.

Really I'd say don't jump into the 3D modeling environment. Jump into
clay/foam/blocks/glue/crafting. Spend a little time there first, then get into
the more precise realm. You'll thank yourself later. Iterate and develop, its
the sort of thing the creators of NEST did.

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ISeemToBeAVerb
Do you need an accurate model (from an engineering standpoint) or just a
visual representation of the product?

If you don't need a complex model, you can use a simple 3D tool like Google
SketchUp. That would probably be the easiest solution. If you've got a little
money to spare, there are plenty of CG artists that can work up a model for
you and render it in a photo-realistic manner.

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cjfont
I think this is what CAD software is for?

