Högskolan i Skövde

This report aims to covers the conduction of a final thesis project for the University of Skövde in collaboration with J.Design studio (Stockholm).

The purpose of this project is applying and evaluating CAD and different tools related to the field of 3D CAD within design and product development phases. This has been achieved by the development of two pieces of furniture from a defined line of products stated by existing clients of J.Design.

The initial phase of the project was knowing the design limitations from both clients and their stakeholders. Once these limitations were known, a pre-study phase where 3D CAD modelling was set as the key tool for the research was done. This research identified related tools with CAD that are applied during the development design phase. Starting the development of the two case studies, the user needs’ phase was the first step in the process, followed by a benchmarking study, an ergonomics study, and finally, setting these requirements into a requirement list. Then, the design development phase took place, covering initial sketches until the detailed final solutions. As a final step, the use of the identified tools was evaluated and analysed based on the experience from the two case studies of this thesis project.

From this evaluation came the conclusion that these tools need to take part in the design phase in a certain moment depending on the level of development, and as the level of sophistication of the tool increases, the information and detail provided are also higher.