information and feedback.
That’s why it’s important to have
tools that let designers easily make
changes and create new prototypes,
with as little preparation as possible.
The team knows that it’s important
to not rely solely on digital designs
to communicate intent. “Sometimes
you can get buried in a CAD model,”
said Senior Industrial Designer Ryan
Berger. “With CAD, you have ability
to in nitely zoom in and pan out, and
you lose a sense of scale. You can
lose the sense that you’re designing
something that’s meant to be held in
the hand.”
Berger said that it’s critical to
create physical mockups, even in
the early design process, to solidify
the connection between the design
and the actual product. That’s where
PolyJet Technology comes in – its
multicolour, multimaterial capabilities
and ef cient work ow software make
PolyJet an ideal addition to the product
design process.
To test out the capabilities of the
J55 and its software, the team came
up with a two-part clamshell Bluetooth
speaker design. The concept was
designed rst in Solidworks, and then
re ned in KeyShot, where detailed
CMF options could be chosen.
With 3MF le formats the team
could easily go from KeyShot to
GrabCAD Print, and continue to
test ideas a few hours later. Design
headaches like adding texture
to parts were eliminated, which
meant huge time savings for Priority
Designs.
“Before, it would have taken us
upwards of a week to model this
part,” said Rupe. “With KeyShot and
the J55, you send the le to print, and
the next morning it’s done.”
Stratasys estimates that 3MF
support with KeyShot can reduce 3D
print modeling time of CMF models
to a single day, while traditional
modeling for nal iterations can take
from one to three weeks. The new
work ow enables the CMF design
phase to start earlier in the design
process, helping bring new products
to market faster, and also keeps
modeling in-house to reduce risk of
intellectual property loss.
“The J55 made true full-colour,
multi-material 3D printing accessible
to design studios everywhere, but
to fully transform how products are
designed, we needed to make the
whole work ow
simple,” said
Stratasys vice
president
of design,
Shamir
Shoham.
“Adding
KeyShot support
in our PolyJet
3D printers adds
an additional
advantage
compared to
designers who
are only using 3D
printing for concept
designs and turning
to slower and
expensive traditional
models for detailed
designs.”
This work ow has major
implications for how the team will
approach future projects. Priority
Designs uses KeyShot throughout
the product design process – it
offers a large material library
and the renders help
communicate ideas to
clients. The ability to go
from KeyShot render to
3D print with few steps in
between saves time and
makes it easier to create
physical prototypes.
“The translation
between KeyShot and
GrabCAD is one step,”
said Stokes. “It’s one le that’s all
packaged together, and it translates
perfectly when you import it into
GrabCAD for printing. So it’s
seamless and time saving.”
Luxion re ned the new KeyShot
10 Smart Export functionality to
improve the simplicity of 3D printing
with Stratasys, working with some of
the companies’ shared customers.
“We were able to put automatic
UV Unwrapping, baking and le
packaging all in one step, allowing
easy, fast, and intuitive 3D printing
with next generation full CMF printers
such as the J55,” said Luxion vice
president of product and strategy,
Derek Cicero. “We are proud to
embrace 3MF with Stratasys as
an industry-backed, open format,
containing data about colours,
textures and other key manufacturing
information, making it a huge step up
from STL.”
Not only does it save weeks
of prototyping time, the J55 and
GrabCAD Print work ow also saves
money. Full colour, multi-material
models are costly to outsource
and produce, but they’re much
less expensive to create in-house.
And because it requires less active
labour than traditional manufacturing
techniques, designers have more free
time to spend perfecting products.
“Having a full-colour 3D
model in the middle of the
design process really
changes the game,”
explained design intern
Alicia Koslowski.
“Being able to get
design feedback on
a model that looks
like the real thing
is huge.” !
The PolyJet 3D printer
transformed Priority
Designs’ prototyping
process
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