What is the difference between industrial design, product design, and mechanical design?
Industrial design, product design and mechanical design are both related and different, and are done by many people together, few people can be proficient in these different jobs at the same time.
Industrial design is essentially appearance design, the design and expression of the shape of industrial products, the relationship between the location of features, materials, colors, surface treatment, etc., mainly in terms of aesthetics, widely used in industrial supplies, crafts, daily necessities and other industries. A truly excellent industrial designer, in addition to aesthetic creative skills, should also understand and familiar with the working principle of the product designed, the way to achieve the function, the internal structure, the product realization process, manufacturing methods, mold realization methods, etc. Only in this way, the appearance of the design is “reliable”, only to be able to Product realization, otherwise it can only be a joke, can only be a scrap of paper.
Product design: generally refers to the design of the internal structure of the product, the design of the support, connection, position relationship between the parts, and the realization of the function of the whole machine, generally applied to the design of the structure of non-transmission parts. There are also special cases, a small part of the product design also includes the appearance design, and then together with the structural design package to the end. Product design, also need to master a very comprehensive knowledge, otherwise, the same can only be paper, either the product can not be achieved, or product design clumsy, or high cost, or low reliability and many other defects, in short, an excellent product and a poor product, the difference in the eyes of professionals is huge. The focus of product design lies in the appearance of the product, the level of detail workmanship, cost control and so on, such as cell phone products, its structure is not complex, but its quality level is quite high, the grasp of details is quite in place.
Mechanical design: generally in non-standard automation equipment, mechanical equipment, robotics and other industry applications are mostly focused on products with more moving parts, and the whole machine is complex, expensive, relatively high technical content and other characteristics, but the production batch is generally not too large. The position requires a solid mechanical principles, mechanical analysis, motion simulation and other skills, and also need to understand the relevant knowledge of each component, is a relatively high threshold for the position. The focus of mechanical design products is on functional implementation, reliability, performance parameters and other aspects, while the requirements for industrial design, user experience, appearance quality requirements and so on will be relatively low. For example, the design of a machine tool, its reliability, performance and other aspects of the requirements are quite high.
The above three different positions, so to speak, are related to each other but there is a big difference, like industrial design and product design, a commodity and to design the surface and to design the structure, this time you will not only surface design, to learn the primary surface, but also to learn the structural design, so the study should be targeted, for your industry to, the industry needs to master which, you will learn which!