DIYbanter - View Single Post - Michael Fortune

charlie b (in ) said:

| Most of use seldom do any piece more than once, and often go
| at making a piece with the Marketing Department's "Ready -
| Fire- Aim" approach. "Fixing F**K Ups and making them
| 'Features'" seems to be the semi-norm. I personally use
| the Design / Build As You Go" method, having a vague notion
| of what the end result will be and only the length, width and
| depth constraints in mind. Sometimes it works surprisingly
| well - and sometimes - not so well.
|
| Then there's Michael Fortunes approach.
|
interesting article snipped
|
| Imagine having the ability to develop a design this way, knowing
| exactly how it will be made, what jigs and fixtures will be needed
| AND build in options for variations of the design - BEFORE making
| the first cut in the wood. It would be nice to sit in on his
| internal dialogue as a piece is developed. The guy's amazing - and
| a nice person.

What you've described is the approach required for CNC woodworking,
where nothing can be done until the design is fully specified in a CAD
drawing which is subsequently converted to a part program (think:
_software_ template) which is subsequently used to produce parts using
CNC tooling.

Once the part program has been produced, it can be used to make as
many copies as needed.

When parametric programming is used, the part can be automatically
modified according to the parameter values (to draw from your example,
perhaps to change the diameter of the mirror or to allow for
elliptical mirrors by specifying major and minor axis values) to
produce an entire family of similarly-styled pieces.

It works - and it's fun!

--
Morris Dovey
DeSoto Solar
DeSoto, Iowa USA
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto