It’s no longer what if: it’s Project Dreamcatcher, and it’s the next generation of computational design.
Thursday, November 27, 2014
Autodesk Project Dreamcatcher Goal Directed Design
It’s no longer what if: it’s Project Dreamcatcher, and it’s the next generation of computational design.
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6 comments:
This is defiantly a head scratcher, I can see how this is useful for maybe industrial designers or engineers doing preliminary work, but I wonder what it could do for the theatrical community. My first thought when reading this article actually was about the line that Kevin Hines always says about using AutoCAD for theatre; it’s like cutting butter with a chainsaw. That makes me wonder if this program would be just like that. Then that made me think, well, who should be using this program in a theatrical setting, scenic designers? Well on the one hand it would be nice if all designers paid attention of physics and knew what they were designing would be physically possible, but that does not really seem to be what the program is supposed to be used for. Also, deciding whether or not it is physically possible I not really the job of the designer. So is it for the technical designer of the scenery? Well, it could be useful if it was easy to switch between this program and classic or 3D AutoCAD, but even that would seem like overkill.
This is cool, cloud computing is really neat and can do really cool things. It is interesting to see the power of the cloud being used for brute force design. I am curious what the input for this program looks like, I can't imagine how you could steer a computer to design a bike by telling it you want a 2 wheeled human powered form of transportation. I am also interested to see where they are getting the "cloud" they are using, whose processors are being tapped to make this supercomputer mesh? It looks like this program is still in the early conceptual stages, but it will be exciting to see what autodesk comes up with for it down the line.
I think this goal directed design software sounds interesting, but even though the company states they're not trying to replace the designer I can't help but feel like they're crossing some boundaries.
Yes, I do see worth in having an arbitrary design to use as spring board that you can then refine into something new, but then is the designer really creating something new thats all their own or are they replicating an idea and then decorating? The company even states that the software is intended to free up the designer so they can "move away from repetitive design tasks and calculations and instead focus on creative design." With designers focusing almost solely on aesthetics are they still "designers" or just glorified decorators. I personally believe a design evolves as you create it so its imperative that a designer is directly involved in the process of creating their work at all times, even if they do include tedious calculations. I see how this could be extremely useful form an engineering standpoint as it could be helpful for figuring out easier ways to design complex machinery, but even so the software seems misguided as the whole point of an engineer or designer is that it is their job to figure out these problems. This program seems to do the bulk of the work for you, which can be insulting to ones profession, much like a carpenter might feel when he's handed a set of plans with every dimension written in. If you're going to do all the work for someone whats the point?
I don't know if this software will catch on, but as of now I'm not for it, I think it is misguided and misses the entire point of design. Also there are underlying issues of intellectual property (does an altered software rendered design belong to you or Autodesk?)and the software's ability to account for real life factors such as cost and limits of material. For now I think its best if we leave ALL the designing to the designers.
I'm beginning to realize that AutoDesk is typically a step behind other, less known companies. Computational design has been around for a while and I know that a lot of the architects are pretty fluent with it. I don't really know how useful it is to have the brute force done within the cloud, while there's a possibility that the servers can have better processing power than whatever you're working on, anything cloud related has been rather lack luster whenever I've tried to work with it. I guess we'll see where this AutoDesk product ends up and if it'll just be another thought of the past like some of their other projects.
It's hard to tell whether this is a dream down the pipeline or a product coming soon. As a premise, it sounds really nice. I'm skeptical how the project will transfer into fruition. I've used similar tools like this and they are never as useful as you'd like. I believe some of ETC's lighting consoles have a similar feature, as does Adobe's graphics softwares. It seems this tool may not be so useful for theatrical designers but may technical directors, if it really was robust. However, it may work better for metal and plastics than wood.
so computational design or parametric design has a group of people who love it and a group of people who really hate it. I loved how the article commented on the fact that the program isn't doing the designing for you, because that is one of the main issues that people dislike with computational design. This program is still doing a lot of the work for the designer, it is creating the form, not the designer. Gehry, zaha Hadid, Diller Scofidio and Renfro are all big architecture firms that incorporate computational design into their buildings. Its the most popular wave in architecture right now, and its only going to continue to become more prominent in the field. I think the key is finding a balance between what the computer does and how that can help the designer, but not replace them.
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