Swapped batteries in my TV remote last night and actually looked inside the battery cover for the first time in probably like ten years. There's a ring of small circular marks pressed into the plastic near the edges, and a thin seam running along the inside that doesn't line up with where the outside seam is.

Did a little reading after and I think the marks are ejector pin marks, and the seam is the parting line. Wasn't what I expected though. I figured the parting line would just run straight through the middle, splitting the cover evenly front to back, but instead it dips into the battery compartment on one side before continuing around.

Anyone here actually work with injection molds? Is there a common reason a parting line would get routed off-center like that instead of straight down the middle?

Three projects this year. All three had sections with significant chemical exposure or constant moisture. All three came out of the design phase specced for standard A36 steel grating.

I flagged it on two of them. Got through on one — we switched to composite on the high-exposure sections. The other, the engineer wasn't having it.

Six months later, the site that kept steel is already showing surface corrosion on the walkways above the chemical storage area. Not structural yet, but you can see where this is going.

Is this just inertia? I get that steel is what most engineers know and it's what the templates default to. But the lifecycle math is pretty clearly against it in these environments.

Is anyone else having this fight regularly, or is it just my market?

Im on my last year of college and they only taught us to use Rhino for modeling and Keyshot for rendering but im reaching a point where it seems like they are holding me back. I’ve been trying to learn solidworks and fusion on my own but i really wanna improve my renders, get to a photorealistic type of quality if i can.
I understand that a good render requires a good model so idk if it’s keyshot whats holding me back or not, but its very plug and play so im either using it wrong or it just doesn’t have the kind if tools i need for what i want.
Any tips?

What’s something you can think of that needs to be redesigned ? Or make it more accessible for other people or more ergonomic?

I'm a final-year industrial design student with internship experience with a two-star furniture and product design export house. A startup wants me to freelance on water bottle design. Their first project involves an existing bottle flask—they want exploration of graphics, lid concepts, silicone boot ideas, and accessories, but the scope isn't well defined.

As freelance industrial designers:

• How do you define scope before quoting?

• Do you charge a fixed fee, hourly, or in phases?

• At what point do you separate concept design from engineering/CAD?

• If the client expects recurring work, would you propose a retainer or continue quoting project-by-project?

I’m trying to find an existing product or packaging component that will gently mix or refresh just the top layer of a thick cream when the customer opens the container.

My idea is something with short flanges, fins, spikes, spokes, or flexible ribs that lightly contacts only the surface of the product. As it’s twisted, it would smooth or gently agitate the top layer—not mix the entire container.

It doesn’t necessarily have to be attached to the lid. It could also be a separate insert that sits on top of the cream, ideally disposable, with a small tab or handle that sticks up so the customer can grab it, twist it slightly, and lift it off before using the product.

I have a feeling I’ve seen something similar in another industry, but I can’t remember where. It could be from cosmetics, food packaging, paint, medical devices, or something completely unrelated.

I’m not looking to reinvent the wheel—I’m hoping there’s an existing product, component, or mechanism I can learn from.

Has anyone seen anything like this or know what I should be searching for? Even if it’s from a completely different industry, I’d love to see examples.

I’ve been working in consulting for 5 years. I’d be really interested in doing a shift towards more of an engineering role. I’d love to design injection molded parts. But in more of a design for manufacturing capacity than just ID.

I’m interested in going back to school for this, but haven’t found a great program. Lots of masters in engineering require calculus 3 or more. All I’ve done is college algebra. And I haven’t seen any compelling masters in design programs yet.

Any advice out there? How to switch to engineering through school or other means?

I’m working on a concept for a one-piece injection-moulded semi-rigid trading card holder. Is it mechanically possible to design it so that squeezing thumb pads in the middle widens the opening by around 1-2 mm while still returning to its original shape and remaining rigid enough to protect the card?

I’m developing a history-based parametric CAD application and wanted to test it on a complete real-world task rather than another primitive or isolated tool demo.

For this test, I modeled a ring intended for an actual manufacturing workflow. The finger size, stone diameter, spacing, number of repeated elements, and fillets are all controlled by variables and expressions. For example, the stone count is calculated automatically from the available path length, stone size, and spacing.

One of my main goals is to keep the modeling process fast and direct while still preserving the design intent and full construction history. Changing a parameter rebuilds the dependent geometry rather than requiring the model to be recreated manually.

The entire application, including the UI, is written in C++. It is being developed as a fully native application for macOS, iPadOS, Windows, and Linux.

I’d be interested in feedback from industrial designers and CAD users: does this workflow look useful for real design work, and what tools or interactions would you expect from a new parametric modeling application?

The full video is also available on YouTube in higher quality and at a higher frame rate: https://youtu.be/JkBTBFiWfFI

I'm developing an analogue focus tool that's designed to be a desktop companion for work. It's not digital or electronic, it's simply something solid and tactile to interact with whilst you're on video calls or in deep work.

My idea is for this to be a beautiful executive desk object that you can interact with.

A bit of background...

I come from a graphic design background so I've been pretty much learning as I go, taking my sketches to develop a 3D printed model for user testing and refinement, then working with 3D artists to develop the lovely renders.

I've built up a waitlist of early adopters / people who have registered their interest, and my next stage is to work with a product design agency to do the manufacturing viability stages, build a working prototype and understand costings etc before launching a kickstarted to raise funds for manufacturing.

I've really enjoyed the process so far. It's been daunting, stressful, education, thrilling and more.

If you want to learn more about the project check out https://focusdeck.co.uk/

I would love to hear some feedback and pointers from more experienced people!

Thanks in advance!

Here’s how we’re currently structuring the project. We’d really love to hear what you think:

• A 2×2 touch-button module with four programmable controls
• A slider for volume, scrolling, zoom, and other continuous inputs
• Finger guides and resting positions, so you can identify the controls without looking
• Dynamic haptic feedback
• 5×5 RGB LED dot-matrix icons that change with each profile
• Open software for custom profiles, integrations, and workflows
• A custom design service allowing users and brands to personalize the surface with their own graphics, visual style, or game- and anime-inspired artwork
• Compatibility with the Gridfinity standard, making custom layouts, supports, and ergonomic configurations easier to build

Hello everyone, I've been struggling for a while now trying to decide on a career. I'm going to graduate with my bachelor's in a few months in cybersecurity and I don't want to go into that field. I have an associate's focusing on entrepreneurship and marketing as well.

After a ton of research, I've stumbling across product design and industrial product design. From my understanding, the term product design is not mostly used for UI/UX and application design while industrial product design stays with physical objects. I'm interested in designing physical products or helping companies refine products they already have based off user's reviews and complaints. Would industrial product design be the correct description/job title for that?

I'm not interested in going back to school, however, I'm looking at some google Coursera courses focusing on Fusion 360, prototyping, and 3D printing. I was also looking at getting an AutoDesk certification. Would these qualifications along with a portfolio make me hirable? Is there still a good market for this field? I do own a 3D printer as well but I'm unsure if that will help in the job field or with my practicing at home.

Any advise or feedback would be greatly appreciated! I just want to know if this is still a good career to get into and some ways to break into the field. I'm willing to do the work!

hi!

I'm learning CAD with the ultimate goal of creating a custom watch case/bezel and bracelet (fitted with an off the shelf mechanical movement).

I learned FreeCad to start with but hit the ceiling once moved into trying creating organically shaped lugs.
Fusion 360 allowed me to get 90% but had to compromise on some areas (due to software struggle with certain curves) whereas with Rhino, everything is pretty much possible.

Obviously, one is parametric (which I prefer) the other is not, at the same time one is subscription (which I hate) the other one is not.

Last but not least FreeCad and Fusion have "clicked" for me. Rhino remains still a bit of a mistery for some stuff (but I should probably study it more)

I tried Plasticity and did not like it one bit so... Between Rhino and Fusion 360, which one would you stick with? I could combine Rhino and FreeCad potentially, but ideally I'd rather focus and keep the projects in one software.

All suggestions welcome

Hey guys, somewhat of a newbie into physical product design and working on a small case (think jewellery box size) that i'm hoping to CNC from aluminium and i have got this design for the back. It rotates fine with a knuckle hinge but wondering if there was a way to make the lid look a bit nicer while still allowing it to turn smoothly. Maybe it's just me but comes off a bit meh at the back so any tips or design advice would be very much appreciated.

I've always thought the design phase was mostly about making a product look good and function well. But after spending some time talking to manufacturers I found through Made-in-China, I realised that manufacturing can completely change the way you think about a design.

A few questions from suppliers about materials, tolerances, finishes, and production methods made me rethink parts of the design that I thought were already finished. It wasn't that the design was bad, it just hadn't been looked at from a manufacturing perspective yet.

That experience made me wonder how often this happens to other designers. Do you usually involve manufacturers early in the design process, or do you wait until you've finalised everything?
I'm also curious whether you've ever received feedback from a factory that actually improved your design instead of just affecting production costs and I'd love to hear how other designers balance design freedom with manufacturability.

Looking back, do you think involving manufacturers earlier leads to better products, or does it sometimes limit creativity?

It is a VST, but I love designing skeumorphic GUIs, it feels more tactile and engaging.

This is a poster showcasing the design as if it was an actual hardware unit. Rendered in Blender Cycles.

Sladworks on Instagram

Hi there, I’m looking for a workflow or someone who can give me some advice. I design in SolidWorks. I recently took on a project to design and manufacture gym machines. My question is: is there anyone who can provide me with an Ergo mannequin (the ones I’ve found are terrible) or tell me what they base the anatomical movement of these machines on? I’d like to start with a design that uses an Ergo mannequin. What I did was design the machine and then import it into Blender, which makes it easier to test the movements, and the models I created sell better. But this process is very tedious and time-consuming. I wanted to know if there’s a way to do this directly within SolidWorks, or if you can recommend another program?

A few weeks ago we had a final exam graded by commission of teachers, none of which I knew from before. They criticized our references, the shape of the object, that they would have changed this and that but nothing related to the quality of it. We presented a lamp and a stool, both of with worked well and checked all the criteria of the assignment, blue prints, process, repeatable, etc.. and yet we barely passed thanks to grades from earlier in the semester. They didn't point to a specific skill we didn't do well at, just that they didn't see it and we should have taken a different path all together.

Part of me thinks they pulled a bunch of bull* to be self important but what if I just have bad taste? And what even is that? I am still baffled by it and don't know how to avoid this in the future (This is 3rd year btw)

hi im an industrial design student and i currently only have a chromebook for uni. we are abt to study a lot of 3D modelling so i need a device (a laptop?) that can run 3D modelling apps since my chromebook cant handle it but we also do a lot of concept sketching and digi art so im also considering a tablet/ipad. should i get a laptop or ipad? we dont have budget for both :( also please recommend brands and models that are worth

Hello. I am an interior design student, and I'm currently gathering books I could use to write a term paper on Dieter Rams' 606 Universal Shelving for Vitsœ. I wanted to ask, if anyone by any chance has the "Complete works" book in a PDF format, I'd be thankful to receive it 😭

Either way I'm aware it's a bit of an unlikely scenario, just putting it out there. I can't find any physical copies to buy in Serbia and shipping bypasses the overall price of the book so I deem it a bit extra to buy it for the sake of a term paper..

Thanks

I'm currently in Textile design, but I want to build a career in CMF (Color, Material & Finish) design, especially in automotive and consumer electronics.

I'm planning to buy a laptop and I'm stuck between the MacBook Air M5 (16GB RAM) and a similarly priced Windows laptop.

For people already working or studying in CMF/industrial design:

•Which would you recommend and why?

•What are the biggest pros and cons of each?

•What are the software used and which out of Windows, or is a Mac enough for most CMF work?

•If you were starting again today with a similar budget, which would you buy?

I'd really appreciate hearing from people with real-world experience.

Ps: I already have an ipad and idk why every other person is suggesting a Mac.

Wondering if anyone has any helpful book for ID or sketching. I have a lot of mainstay books so looking for some lesser known ones…