System Design Cycle or Machine Design Cycle: Creative Design Synthesis

System Design Cycle or Machine Design Cycle: Creative Design Synthesis

What is Creative Design Synthesis?

Once it has been decided that the project is feasible technically as well as economically, comes the next important step of the system design which is creative design synthesis (see fig below). The feasibility study was carried out to make sure that the goals of the project can be achieved so as to avoid the next highly complex and time consuming steps if the goals were not be achieved. If the project is found unfeasible the designer resends the specifications and requirements to the company to see if some changes can be made in them in order to make the project feasible. So after carrying the feasibility study again and again with some changes, the designer finally declares that the project is feasible.

Thereafter all the complex and time consuming processes of actual design will start. The creative design synthesis is the first step of the actual design of the machine or product and the most challenging and interesting part. With all the specifications in his/her hand the designer has the most important task of creating the product as per the specifications and requirements given by the host or the client company. Here the designer has to perform the multiple roles of the engineer, the inventor and the artist so as to lay the foundation of the creation of actual product.

As an engineer the designer will have to find out among the various possible complex systems, the best one that will actually and eventually create the product or machine. The designer will have to consider all the forces acting on the various components of the product or machine and decide the various dimensions. As an inventor the designer has to create the new product that will fulfill all the needs, specifications and the requirements of the product. This product may have never ever been discovered earlier, he/she could be the first person in the world to discover and create the product that meets all the relevant requirements. At the same time the person have to be good artist so as to give aesthetic looks to the product that he/she has created. These are the days when looks are given high priority, hence they should be given due consideration.

This creativity is obviously not easy to inculcate in the person. Creativity is actually the habit pattern of the person. Everybody has creative ability to create at various competence levels. The proper educational preparation helps enhance the creativity of the person. The low self esteem and psychological handicaps tends to lessen the creativity of the person.

Qualities of a Creative Design

Among all the above discussions it will be easy to say that creativity is the ability to get new and useful ideas for meeting the engineering goals. Here are some qualities of the new design:

  1. The design is entirely new and unique.
  1. The creative product can have new functions and features or it can have beautiful looks or it can have both.

  2. The next important quality of the creative design is the simplicity of the design. The newly designed product having good functions, features and looks but having highly complex design is not considered to be a creative product.

System Design Cycle or Machine Design Cycle

Reference

Book: Machine Design by Dr. P. C. Sharma and D. K. Aggarwal

This post is part of the series: System Design Cycle or Machine Design Cycle

Whenever the new product or the machine is to be design there is a cycle of the steps that are followed. The sequence of the events in the machine design cycle or system design cycle have been codified Asimow, who is considered to be the father of system design or machine design. Here they are:

  1. System Design Cycle
  2. System Design Cycle: I) Recognition of a Need
  3. System Design Cycle: II) Specifications and Requirements
  4. System Design: III) Feasibility Study
  5. System Design Cycle: IV) Creative Design Synthesis
  6. System Design Cycle: V) Preliminary Design and Development
  7. System Design Cycle: VI) Detailed Design
  8. System Design Cycle: VII) Prototype Building and Testing
  9. System Design Cycle: VIII) Design for Production and IX) Product Release