Burrell (Bo) Clawson
Inventor/medical product designer
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Burrell (Bo) Clawson
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Ejector sleeve injection cavity with dimensions removed.
Drawing at the speed of thought
As an inventor/medical product designer, I was on the drawing
board for 25 years... until PowerDraw 2.0 from Engineered Software
arrived in the late 80s. I quickly went from 2-3 draftsmen/designers
executing paper drawings back to just myself doing all part and
tooling drawings & have never looked back (yes, I tried five
different CAD applications back then and PowerDraw won hands down
for productivity). My work has concentrated on breathing equipment
for SCUBA and Fireman's self-contained breathing equipment to
doing respiratory ventilator pneumatics & regulator design
to disposable breathing ventilator circuits and humidifier components
over the last 30 years.
The plastic parts I design require drawings of parts, assembly fixtures, ultrasonic bonding horns, prototype and production injection molds, extrusion dies & corrugated molds for extruded corrugated tubing.
When I concentrate on a new concept or innovative design, it is rarely instantly evident what the final design will be once the range of factors and possibilities are considered. I find it common to look at 5-15 ways of accomplishing a design for a new product before picking the "best" design. PowerCADD has proved itself emminently efficient at quickly allowing me to investigate all the possibilities I see while "drawing at the speed of thought". If I were to try to do this creative work in 3D solids it would take much longer and result in often drastic changes or total remaking of a solids model from scratch to "look" at another new design. 3D solids doesn't lead itself to quick creative fluidity in seeing the variations I want to consider. 3D Solids does work well for doing CNC machined parts, however.
PowerCADD lets me do drawings fast wherever I am located. WildTools
has expanded the ease of use of more complicated drafting operations
to the point where I don't think of PowerCADD without WildTools.
PowerCADD's user-assignable command keys are a big part in achieving
drawing speed (and QuicKeys helps too). It used to be that isometric
assembly drawings were a nightmare in school days with hours and
hours of work for simple assemblies. I don' t do isometric views
often, but can do them rather quickly with WildTools when needed
without taking a class (God forbid).
Library symbols are surely an asset for any designer, and I have
produced a set of the most basic mechanical symbols for threads,
fasteners, dowels, bearings etc which Engineered Software sells.
Getting drawings and details to other people is a must. "Copy" from PowerCADD & "Paste" into most any Mac application from word processors to databases is trivially easy, or using Mac screen shots with Command-Shift-4 and a selection rectangle and also using Adobe's Acrobat to create pdf files is as easy as "Print", and it is a natural for cross platform use for read only files. I use colored lines and fills a lot, because they lend clarity to complicated assemblies.
The ultimate end-game PowerCADD design team arrived two years ago: Mac G3 PowerBooks with 1024 pixel LCD screens, PowerCADD, WildTools and some extra goodies.
A digital camera (Olympus 2500L for now with a $9 CF/PC card adaptor), Canon bubble jet printer and data-capable cellphone completes my mobile engineering office. A FireWire Sony DV camera has just joined the team, but it is still in potty training. The one non-portable piece of equipment which I still use is my trusty HP 650c with PostScript for large format drawings. The 650c still works like a champ with PowerCADD using LaserWriter 8 Chooser after all these years with only a Farallon ethernet-to-serial bridge ($50). If I need super quality output, I go to Kinkos with their HP 2500CP to get near photo quality on special paper for presentations or convention banners. Once a product goes into production, PowerCADD drawings are gussied up for illustrations easily (no end to PowerCADD uses).
I routinely do drawings or modifications in the shop, at vendors, trade shows or in hospitals when measuring up equipment or machining and almost never do pencil sketches anymore. Hospital clinicians are suprised seeing me draw CAD drawings "in the ward". I also take my PowerBook out to the lathe and mill when I cut simple parts rather than printing paper (so far so good... no disasters yet -- keep the screen closed on the keyboard when the chips fly).
PowerCADD does for design is what MS Office does for the business
office. As such, maybe PowerCADD might be renamed PowerCADD Design
Team and bundle it with WildTools, Acrobat, PowerCADD Translator,
and QuicKeys thrown in for a special package price. Simplicity
and speed often win out over needless "professional"
complexity and PowerCADD does it in 2D CAD for me.
It is easy in life to ask for too much and the same ocurrs in
CAD. 3D has specific advantages for certain operations, but takes
longer to construct objects than doing traditional 2D, and isn't
as useful or quick for drawing a series of "Trial Balloons".
3D typically is going to set a user back $3-5,000 minimum and
have a vastly longer learning curve, so 'buying 3D' is only the
start of a long process. PowerCADD on the other hand, is a product
a user familiar with Macintosh can use and start drawing details
within hours. PowerCADD is very close in icons, palettes, drawing
surface and in methods of tool use to such programs as Microsoft
Office & ClarisWorks, so its methods of drawing are already
familiar to tens of millions of users. In the end game, it is
quick and productive.
The drawings I've submitted for the Drawing Room generally have
had notes and dimensions removed for clarity in viewing on a small
web browser window. They were all originally used for design
or construction, however, and are not merely "illustrations".
Bo Clawson
Bo Clawson
Burrell (Bo) Clawson is a mechanical designer/inventor. He was raised in St. Helens, Oregon, and schooled in Mechanical Technology at the Oregon Institute of Technology. He is now rooted in Orange County, California, where innovation is the norm. Burrell (Bo) Clawson, Tilikum, Inc., 883 W. 16th St., Newport Beach, CA 92663 Office: (949) 574-7560. Email: bclawson@tilikum.com
These are all molded plastic medical parts that Bo has designed.
Ultrasonic Bonder Table/Booster Extrusion Die Mold Demo
