Advanced 3D-editing à la Flintstone

[geert_2 462]

Maybe it's not 3D-printed, but it is still 3D-editing. Sort of... I hope I can post this here?

 

Most people are not used to reading 2D-plans on paper, and they have difficulty interpreting them correctly. So, for the reorganisation of an office, I made all furniture out of plasticine. This allows rearranging and trying lots of layouts in a very short time. Moving around the furniture in plasticine goes a lot faster than moving around 3D-models on a computer screen; and looking at plasticine models from all angles goes faster than orbiting around a 3D-model on-screen. Further, you can easily walk around and show this to collegues, without the need of a computer with 3D-editing software.

 

 

It looks like Flintstone-stuff, I know. But actually, everything is quite accurately on-scale: 1cm = 25cm, thus 4cm = 1m (the floor is standard mm-paper under a plexiglass plate). This is advanced 3D-editing à la Flintstone. :)

 

All this took ca. 2.5 hours to make, most of which was spent warming up and softening the plasticine, as I forgot to put it in the oven at 40°C. I could have designed it all in CAD and 3D-print it, but that would probably have taken more than a week to print, especially if I wanted the parts to be solid enough to sit stable when moving around the whole scene. Plasticine weights a lot and is sticky, so no problem here. Modeling the girls in CAD would for sure have taken more than a week, maybe more than a month, since I would need to learn Blender first. Now it took me ca. 15 minutes per girl.

 

The main difference between these models and traditional 3D-models is that I make these *before* I draw any plans. Usually it is the other way round. All collegues involved can freely move around the furniture, walk the figurines around in the scene, and try out and discuss what looks best to them. Only after the final layout is chosen, we would draw any plans. Although often plans will not be needed anymore, since the model is clear enough by itself. So a few photos with quick annotations about part numbers and dimensions will do.

 

It is not 3D-CAD design, but rather 3D-MAD design. Manually Aided Design... :)

 

[SandervG 1,407]

looks good! It's not your office since you're not present, or am I seriously misjudging something here? ?

 

[geert_2 462]

Indeed not my office; it's for female collegues. Meanwhile there are four walking around in the model.  :)

 

But I planned my own laboratory in the same way, a couple of years ago, when we had to move to another campus. I represented each piece of lab equipment we had in plasticine. It made the discussions with the project leaders a lot easier, since I could clearly demonstrate what furniture I needed, and why and where I needed it. But then of course I made male figurines, although without all details. :)

 

You can recognise the hydraulic pump, test bench, vacuum cleaner, ladder, weight balance,... Note that the scale is half of the above one: 1cm = 0.5m.

 

 

I like 3D-editing and printing, it is great, and we can now develop things we couldn't have done in the past. But I do not go along with the hype in the press that "it is the best solution for everything". Sometimes it isn't. Like in these cases.

 

Edited July 4, 2018 by geert_2

[geert_2 462]

All four of them now... :)

 

Scale: 4cm = 1m