On this page I'm collecting documents, links and other pieces of information I hope you'll find useful if you're interested in creating new products and bringing them to market. You can also find these in my blog, but this page will be more "sticky" while the blog will be more fleeting. We've also got a Design recycling page where you can download designs that we are able to share - as well as buy tools, parts, modules and instruments we've made for ourselves in the course of our project work.

Design tools

Alibre Design 3D CAD

I've been using this for years. It offers full parametric 3D solid modelling - functionally it is pretty close to SolidWorks but at much lower cost. I've got the full "expert" suite.

Solidworks eDrawings viewer

This is a great free tool to check the results of exporting STL or STEP files from Alibre Design before sending them off for rapid prototyping.

ViewMate

Software to view and manipulate gerber files as used for PCB manufacture, by Pentalogix.

Prototyping

Models, breadboards and prototypes

We build and use a large variety of physical models. On this page I discuss our views.

PCB prototyping

Generally we design PCBs to be made by suppliers but in some cases we etch them in-house. On this page I've collected some of our experiences.

Recommended reading

An interesting read is Critical Mass by Philip Ball, in which he explores how the complex behaviour of crowds - people, grains of sand or molecules - can be governed by each participating "agent" adhering to very simple rules. He uses insights from the field of statistical physics to model situations where human crowds interact, such as markets, audiences, electorates etc.

His point is that in order to explain the behaviour of crowds there is no need to look at the individual agents in too much detail. He acknowledges that his models are extreme simplifications of reality, but show that even with this gross simplification the rules of the agents' interaction dictate the macroscopic behaviour of the group.