Rough water weekend

If a picture is worth 1,000 words, here's a 3,000-word story:

Why CAD CAM outsourcing to freelancers

The completion of engineering projects has always been serious problems for companies; whether it is computer aided design e.g. electrical engineering, new product design, or civil engineering of a new building. The engineering project typically needs specific skills and experience that might not be available in-house even for an engineering company. Moreover, the accuracy needed in product or structural design often makes it unfeasible to outsource the project.

Today with the help of technology, many businesses and individuals are familiar with the online project marketplaces that connect service buyers and service providers at one place and such marketplace for engineering services is http://www.cadcamproject.com - it is a common marketplace for CAD, CAM, CAE projects, AutoCAD jobs, and architectural jobs.

Find below few of the main reasons that why one should outsource their engineering services.

· It will assist you to cut your costs. This will carry your business at more money-making phase.

· You will have the help of professionals with high expertise without spending too much of your money.

· You can focus on your core business activity. By this way you can clutch more market share in your industry.

· It also gives you a choice to pay only when you hire the services.

· You can obtain the precise set of environment and infrastructure to get your work done efficiently and professionally.

The outside companies who are providing engineering outsourcing services are third party providers more commonly referred as “Service Providers”. For an example, http://www.cadcamproject.com is a B2B online CAD Outsourcing marketplace that brings together professional CAD providers with CAD buyers who are in need of CAD Drafting, CAD Designing, CAD Modeling, CAD Rendering, CAD Conversion, AutoCAD services and more.

At present, CAD CAM outsourcing takes many forms. Businesses still hire service providers to handle different business processes, for instance benefits management. However some businesses outsource entire operations.

There are lots of CAD CAM projects and professional providers available and makes the right business connections in the world due to fast growing freelance marketplace.

Agriculture under Water stress: Design Opportunities in India

Design for Agriculture: Who is addressing these issues today?

Prof M P Ranjan

Image01: One of the first design projects done at NID by the first batch of Product Design students in 1967, a Seed Drill that could be pulled by bullocks in small Indian farms. Images are from the NID Documentation 1964-69 (Download 25 MB pdf here)

The World is facing climate change and India is facing severe draught across 250 districts, almost half the country, out of a total of 604 administrative districts have been declared drought hit this year. The stress will be on the local farmers who have to fend for themselves in such times of monsoon failure and they are at the mercy of the elements and also an uncaring administration that would wait till the media raises a stink before any action is taken and usually all too late. This is perhaps where design imagination should come in and anticipate such situations and have strategies in place to meet the contingencies with imagination and viable offerings well before the event takes over. Are we ready for it? Far from it, as it apparently seems to be, but why?. Our design infrastructure is quite incapable of making any immediate and specific offering since no investments have been done in the past to explore and address such systemic eventualities that seem to revisit us time and again. Agriculture is unglamorous and unlike fashion gets very little attention from the media and from the design community as well. In the 60’s and 70’s Bucky Fuller wrote about an anticipatory design science movement that could and would address many of these glaring eventualities and he went about setting a personal example with path breaking thoughts and conceptual offerings that could be followed by others in the years to come, most of them well documented. The Bucky Fuller Institute now has instituted an annual design competition that is looking for mega solutions that follow the Bucky Fuller spirit and each year one design team is awarded the coveted Bucky Fuller Challenge Award while several others are honored as runners-up and finalists, all showcased at the Challenge website here : Bucky Fuller Idea Index

Image02: A low cost grain thresher designed in 1968 by Product Design students at NID as a response to the challenge from the Eames India Report of 1958. (Download 360 kb pdf file here)

At the Government of India level however, we seem to think and act as if design applies only to the needs of organized industry which may perhaps explain why the National Institute of Design (NID) is located under the administration and budgetary control of the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) and perhaps this also explains why NID has never had invested in an education programme dealing with design for agriculture all these years. On the other hand media thinks and acts as if design is located in the arena of fashion and huge media space is accorded to this form of design at the sad exclusion of all other kinds and genres of design, the kind that is desperately needed across as many as 230 sectors of our economy today. The National Design Policy too is silent on the needs of this vast sector and it is particularly so on the needs of the public goods and services that are usually the domain of Governments to serve, being mostly ignored by private industry since the consumer base is too diffuse to be of immediate value to them. The economists who advise our Governments and industry tend to overlook the sector as a whole and leave these matters to politics and legislative processes under the broad umbrella of development programmes, but usually to provide lip service just before the elections. There are a few exceptions to this rule however and they include Hazel Henderson who debunks the theories of Nobel Prize winning clan of the Chicago School and Brian Czeck who in his obscure book titled “Shoveling Fuel for a Runaway Train” debunks the “growth at any cost theories” of the Keynesian school and proposes a more humane and ecological form of economics that looks at a steady-state and sustainable models of development.

Image03: A small selection of NID’s Agri-Expo, Rural and Water related projects done over the years.

With much of India facing a severe drought we need to look afresh at the needs of our agricultural sector that are hard hit by the absence of water. Design schools in India have ignored this sector except in fits and starts and that too in some peripheral areas of need. Government too did very little to encourage the design schools to take up the challenges by providing the required funding and the mandate to act in these areas. The NID, did however design a major exhibition for the Department of Agriculture way back in 1977 but this was a trade fair and after much chest thumping about the success of the mega-show which was impact assessed in those days by slick marketing teams from the advertising industry everyone seems to have once again forgotten the sector as a whole. I recall that the early projects undertaken by the students of the first product design programme at NID in the late 60’s included several tools for the agricultural sector but over the years we seem to have distanced ourselves from the needs of this huge sector that provides maximum employment across the country. Perhaps we were still under the influence of the Eames Report and the teachers and studends did look at the grassroots for inspiration and direction for action. Why should not the multiple new NID’s that are proposed under the new National Design Policy look at these different sectors of the economy rather than taking the NID Ahmedabad as a role model and continue to address address only the market driven sectors of lifestyles and automobiles and the traditional sectors of manufacturing and communication sectors. The need is clear from over 230 sectors of our economy and we need to build a market for design graduates who are capable of working in these neglected sectors and the Government has a major role to play if this is to happen. In the late 80’s I do recall that NID had an assignment to design tractors for an Indian manufacturer but like all other product design projects from that period this one too was bound to sit on the shelf due to the lack of any competition in the Indian industry in those days.

Image04: A view from an earlier post on water harvesting system designed by Dinesh Sharma for Furaat Systems in Ahmedabad inspired on the traditional step wells of Gujarat and Rajasthan.

Earlier on this blog I have shared the work of an NID graduate, Dinesh Sharma, who by drawing inspiration from the Gujarat and Rajasthan traditions of step wells made from modular blocks has designed a water harvesting system that is both elegant as well as functional. The Furaat Water Harvesting system is just one of the many possible approaches and we need too make concerted investments into the design and testing of hundreds of approaches to deal with water in our lives to face the realities of our situation in India and to find solutions for all of these, from region to region.

Image05: P Sainath as seen on Google Images search.

Farmer suicides are today a way of life in most drought hit districts since crop failures and the search for local ground water sources leave our farmers with huge debts that they cannot service and the spiral down to suicide is an almost foregone conclusion. P Sainath, an Indian journalist has spent many years studying the phenomenon of rural poverty starting with his seminal book titled. “Everyone Loves a Good Drought: Stories form India’s Poorest Districts”, in a stark commentary on the corruption and lack of care that is symptomatic of the Indian condition, particularly in rural India. According to the review on Amazon.com – “They reveal how poverty is compounded by corruption, incompetence, laziness, greed and stupidity. Instead of improving life, many government schemes/development programs only make the poorest poorer, while making corrupt politicians, land- owners and the complacent new middle class of Mumbai (Bombay) richer.”

A specific Quote from India Together online about the correlation between local borewells and farmer suicides tells us a chilling story. Quote
“Sinking borewells, rising debt 
P Sainath. 

June 2004: NALGONDA, MEDAK & NIZAMABAD (Andhra Pradesh): Musampally has more borewells than people. This village in Nalgonda district has barely 2000 acres under cultivation. But it boasts over 6,000 borewells - two to every human being. Over 85 per cent of these wells have failed. The rest are in decline. The desperate search for water has bankrupted a once prosperous village….” UnQuote Read the full story here.
And another view from Wiki on Farmer Suicide here

Image 06: Stills from an online video offered by Nature Magazine about the water hot spot developing in western India with severe water stress and ground water depletion in the States of Rajasthan, Punjab, Harayana and Delhi which also happen to be the food bowl of India.

The alarming news is that this water stress is being felt across the food bowl of India across the fertile plains of Punjab, Harayana and Western Uttar Pradesh. While the Design Concepts & Concerns (DCC) course has been addressing the various issues of water in our lives across many domains and verticals we have constant news flows about the shortage of water coming from many sources. The latest one is the result of a six year long satellite based study conducted by a consortium of scientific institutions led by NASA. The alarming video can be watched at the Nature Magazine website at this link here. We need to seriously address the issues that this holds for the design community in India and how we can rally to deal with these realities on the ground and how well we are currently prepared to face these realities. That design can address this kind of challenge is not really in question since this is the only discipline that can bring an integrated and focused body of human experience to bear on these really wicked problems with imagination and political will to find lasting solutions that will get us through this impasse.

Image07: One of the short listed projects under the Bucky Fuller Challenge–New Mexico Renewable Energy Strategy Maps for sustainable regional development.

The Bucky Fuller Challenge Award for 2009 went to the sophisticated Urban Transport solution that redefines personal transportation in our cities. But for me the runner-up, titled “Dreaming New Mexico” shows great promise as a way forward with local planning taking the lead and with the use of maps local communities are involved in envisioning desirable and viable futures which is followed by a sustained programme of “Bioneering” involving the use of imagination, innovation, technology as well as political processes to get the task done. Regional design schools could help locate these dialogues with the community and assist decision makers build new and imaginative solutions to address a host of local issues towards resolution of the same.

Image08: Paul Polak and his product offerings for marginal farmers in Asia and Africa through his international entrepreneurial initiatives.

India needs to look seriously at the needs of our agriculture and rural micro-industry sectors and not just the crafts sector that brings in export income by through a huge number of export oriented industries. The benefits of the huge export sector rarely reach the remote rural producers but increasingly the strategy has been to cluster the production in class two towns and cities and real rural producers are left to fend for themselves. Paul Polak–founder of Colorado-based non-profit 
International Development enterprises (IDE)—is 
dedicated to developing practical solutions that attack 
poverty at its roots, who in his book “Out of Poverty” outlines strategies and products and services that he has developed to achieve huge successes using appropriate design at the marginal farmer level with huge success. Design in India needs to look at these models of rural development and not just the “Lifestyle product” category for the export markets with our crafts capabilities. Another example of design at the periphery comes for the “d-school” in Stanford University’s Stanford Institute of Design where their Executive Director, George Kembel has taken their students to Nepal and Thailand to search for real challenges to create entrepreneurial designs for extreme affordability. (download pdf of the d.school offering here)

India needs to take a leaf out of these initiatives and try and integrate design into our Agricultural Universities or focus the attention of the next NID fully on the needs of the agricultural sector as an integrated offering that looks after the design needs across all the sectors of need from water harvesting and management to managing the cold chain for reaching the food to the consumers across the land and all the tasks and services that come in between these two extremes from the point of view of our fragmented farm ecology all over the country. Wikipedia gives a list of 41 Agricultural Universities in India and it is my view that all of them need to integrate design abilities and actions into their many programmes if they are to be successful to prevent farmer suicides in the future.

Prof M P Ranjan

Louis Poulsen, LP Centrum

Kurt Norregaard, Poul Henningsen

10 shades mounted on 4 legs - Light source located at bottom of fixture - High architectural adaptability - Created for high ceiling spaces - Provides glare free & indirect illumination

Concept

Design by Kurt Norregaard based on sketches by Poul Henningsen. LP Centrum provides high-ceiling spaces with glare-free and indirect lighting. An integral aspect of the design, the 10 shades are designed according to the mathematic curve lituus. The philosophy behind the luminaire is to provide light for spaces, horizontally and vertically alike.

Finish

White, wet painted.

Story behind the product

LP Centrum consists of 10 shades, which have been designed according to the mathematic curve called lituus. Four legs hold these shades. The legs contain the wiring for the light source located at the bottom of the fixture. The design expression of the fixture makes it a born classic. It fits into classical as well as contemporary architecture.

G12. Max. 150 W

Download 3D model from Uploading

www.louispoulsen.com

Rainy day paddle

The forecast today was rain and waves. So as soon as the kids left for school, we packed up and headed to Montrose beach to paddle with Scott Fairty. This wasn't supposed to be a paddling day, but you don't just let 2- to 4-foot waves get away unsurfed.

Guess which car is ours.

Synchonized paddling?

The waves were rolling in nicely at the beach, but the area just north was chaos. Waves were hitting the "sheet piling" (shoreline retaining walls) and bouncing back, creating surf in both directions and at times meeting and combining to create waves twice as large.

Going....

Going...

Gone!

Waves like these can be intimidating. They may be more of a challenge to your confidence than they are to your skills.
Paddling in conditions like these, we realize how well our kayaks handle chaotic waves if we let them. Sometimes we just bob around in confused conditions without bracing to see how little we really need to do. But today, some bracing was necessary.
Forecast for tomorrow:

See you tomorrow, Scott?

Sharon out to sea.

Montreal River in August

Last Friday a group of us paddled the Montreal River from the Highway 2 bridge to the gravel road 165 bridge, a distance of about 40km. It is apparently very unusual to be able to paddle the Montreal at this time of year, with May-June being the usual window of opportunity. Today I talked to Martin at the Saskatchewan Watershed Authority to find out what the water levels were at and what they might be expected to do over the coming couple of weeks. Martin informed me that the river was running at about 25 m3/second, a level that is higher than the average spring peak (the median actually). He also suggested that because of the large size of Montreal Lake which feeds the river, the river should be runnable for some time to come yet.

Martin also sent me this graph of the flow for 2009 at the outflow from Bigstone Lake:


An interesting note was that the water metering station is now a "real-time" station and no longer requires manual reads. The station is expected to soon be added to the list of stations that are available to the public online!

So, if you want to run the Montreal River but missed you chance in the spring, now is the time. The Montreal River has lots of Class 1+ rapids and at the levels we paddled it was not at all technical (I ate a can of salmon while negotiating a series of rapids), but it was a lot of fun, especially the last third which had a couple of stretches of C1/C1+ water that were 3-4km long.

For information on running the Montreal, see Laurel Archer's book Northern Saskatchewan Canoe Trips. I also found a brief description and map online at http://www.princealberttourism.com/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_details&gid=129&Itemid=86 (down at the bottom click "download" or "view" to see some information on running the Montreal as a day-trip).

Follow Up: I posted some pictures as their own post. You can find them at http://pawistik.blogspot.com/2009/11/montreal-river-follow-up.html.

Preview of Alibre Design 12 Release, New Features

Only days remain before the public release of Alibre Design 12 as of time of this article. Alibre 12 definitely continues the standing tradition of delivering powerful, easy-to-use features at low cost. Here is a list of some of them, grouped by their work space:

New commands and tools in Alibre Design:

Alibre Design will offer a 3D-text feature tool allowing text to be added as a parametric part feature. Individual features will support colour change for better identification, and the user will also be permitted to set the default 3D new part colour. Edit commands will include multiple clipboard paste in "rubber stamp" mode. Toolbars will be more customizable, and additional box select modes will speed up editing. Editable 3D section veiws, colour schemes and light sources are also supported now.

The Alibre Sketcher will display missing constraints as degree of freedom callouts (with configurable colourisation). It will also offer optional real-time dimensioning and placement while geometry is drawn, rather than requiring this be completed as an additional design step. This option saves users considerable time in constraint specification. Alibre Sketch will also offer quick bi-directional conversion between model sketch figures and reference geometry. Constraint and snap options for drawing have been added, as well as a new axis mirror option. 2D drawing space will support a new freeform table creation for relevant model data fields.

Alibre version 12 files will offer a convenient thumbnail view from both Windows Explorer and Alibre Vault PDM, which makes file selection easier.

Assembly:
The assembly space move and rotate commands have been merged into a single dialogue for faster model placement by the user. Assembly part arrays / patterns now offer placement preview. View performance for large assemblies has been greatly improved.

Alibre Sheet Metal Design:

Contour and lofted flange support is added. Now sheet metal designs can include tapered corners or profile flange with variable radius along its length. These "lofted flanges" are nicely flattened in Alibre (along with the rest of the part) for the initial pattern stamp or cut-out.

For more information about Alibre 12 improvements, feel free to contact CADDIT in Australia HERE. There is also a downloadable PDF version of this list available HERE.

Stuff we love, part one: Sun protection!

One of the tricky aspects of kayaking is protecting yourself from the sun. We slather on the sunscreen and SPF lip balm, and we still get burned. We're simply exposed to too many hours of direct sunlight.
This summer, each of us discovered a favorite garment that kept us happily protected day after day in the sun.
For Alec, it was the long-sleeved Kokatat Destination Paddling Shirt. It worked exceptionally well protecting him from the sun from the wrists up and had good underarm mesh ventilation. The surprise was that it kept him comfortably cool in hot weather and didn't cool him off too much in cooler weather. (We've both discarded polypro shirts that failed too miserably in one or the other of these situations.) And it looked pretty darn presentable at the end of the day.

The long-sleeved Destination Paddling Shirt proved more versatile than we expected.

For Sharon, it was the Destination Hand Covers. These inexpensive mitts (about $13) fully protect the backs of your hands but don't interfere with your grip on the paddle. One of our paddling friends was skeptical that they'd stay on in surf. But when Sharon pitchpoled her boat later that day, she lost her sunglasses but not her hand covers.

The mitts stayed on and stayed out of the way.

The sun-protection challenge we haven't yet solved is our lips. Even high-SPF lip balm doesn't seem to do the trick. Sharon has taken to applying regular sunscreen that contains titanium dioxide, but even that hasn't proven sufficient. Anybody found a good way to keep from burning their lips? Please let us know.

Rough water rescue practice

North winds at last! The forecast was 3- to 5-foot waves, so we hastened to the lake. This time we wore drysuits, only to find that some of the surface water had returned and the water was relative balmy--somewhere in the mid-60s.
We love practicing rescues, but don't often have an opportunity to try them in the conditions in which we're most likely to need them. (Especially this year, when we've had very few big wave days.) So we took turns putting each other and ourselves back in our boats.

Alec and Hannah complete a t-rescue.

Alec completes a scramble (cowboy) self-rescue.

Every time we do this, we are struck by how well these rescues work in conditions, but how essential it is to move quickly and hold on to everything (boats, paddles, people). We typically teach rescues in calm conditions in which paddlers are unlikely to capsize and try to convince our students that in real conditions, any lapse of attention can lead to serious complications. If the rescuer lets go of the casualty's boat, it can whip away in the wind. If the casualty lets go of his or her boat or the rescuer's deck lines, they can quickly be separated. If anybody lets go of a paddle, they may never see it again. Working on rescues in real conditions is the best test of your technique.

Chicago paddling in August....brrr!

Every city seems to claim the saying, "If you don't like the weather, just wait a minute." Here in Chicago, we can say, "If you like the water temperature, enjoy it while you can!"
Two weeks ago, at the start of the Foundation Safety and Rescue Training class at Geneva Kayak Center Lakefront, the water temperature was a balmy 70 (or thereabouts). This week, it was in the mid-50s.

Kaitlyn looking forward to repeat immersion in 55-degree water.

We've had westerly winds for the past few weeks, and they blew all our warm surface water over to Michigan.

To all our friends in the West Michigan Coastal Kayakers Association: We don't like the water temperature! Send the warm stuff back!

Louis Poulsen, AJ Royal

Arne Jacobsen

AJ Royal is state-of-the-art. Hemispherical fixture housing. Soft uplight emitted through stepped ring louvres moulded to fit the shape of the fixture.

2GX13, E27. Max. 100 W

Download 3D models from Uploading

www.louispoulsen.com

Another terrific Ladies of the Lake symposium

Ladies of the Lake is a unique symposium. Put on by Downwind Sports and sponsored by Impex and Werner Paddles, this all-female kayaking event features one day of local paddle tours, two days of instruction, a featured guest instructor, and a themed costume party complete with a raffle of gear generously donated by its host and sponsors.

Grand Rapids-based instructor Lori Stegmier teaching a class on edging and bracing.

Numerous other symposiums offer women's classes, but this is the only one we know of that is women-only. (It does, however, offer a "Man Camp" for partners and spouses, taught this year by Kelly Blades and Danny Mongno.)
There is something special about women-only classes. They tend to attract women who learn best in a supportive, all-female environment. Some are refugees from bad paddling relationships with men who have too much machismo. Some are looking for ways to improve their paddling that take into consideration female anatomy. Some are intimidated by men in mixed-gender classes. Some simply appreciate the camaraderie of gender-specific classes.
A women-only symposium offers a weekend of immersion in these benefits. Participants get to watch each other and help each other improve over time. They aren't embarrassed about how they look as they attempt to scramble back into their boats. They don't apologize for their lack of upper-body strength. They eagerly adopt strategies that emphasize technique over muscles.

In a rescue class, we teach the rescuer to wrap her body over the deck of boat. Strong men might get away with stabilizing the boat using only their arm strength, but that doesn't tend to work for many women.

The midwest is fortunate to have a remarkable group of female instructors who are dedicated to making the sport accessible to women of all ages and abilities. That's the spirit of Ladies of the Lake.

Chicago-based instructor Wendy Madgwick stands up for female kayakers everywhere.

Vitra, Home Desk

George Nelson, 1958

As graceful as it is decorative: this home desk with its refined, lavishly produced base and understated colours is one of George Nelson's design classics. Originally conceived as a ladies' desk, today it has many uses as a small workstation at home.

Download 3D model from Uploading

www.vitra.com

Northernlighting, Dokka

Birger Dahl, 1954

Dokka is a small pendant light with a clean profile. It is a genuine piece of European post war design history: in 1954 this functional light icon was the first Norwegian lamp ever to be awarded the highly regarded Golden Medal at the Milan Triennale. The lamp, also known as “pendel S/10053”, was produced and sold by the Norwegian electricity company Sonnico (Oslo) for many years. Dokka became one of the best selling Norwegian pendant lamps ever produced, until the day Sonnico closed down its lighting production and sales of the lamp came to an abrupt end. In 2007 Northern Lighting decided to relaunch this design classic, taking care to preserve the main shape and features that originally made it such a well-loved light.

Models:

Dokka chrome

Dokka offwhite

Dokka black

Dokka brown

Specifications:

Pendant lamp

Shade material: Steel

Shade ring material: Electrical plated steel

Shade colours: Offwhite, chrome, black or brown

Wire colour and length: Offwhite or black, 250 cm

E27. Max. 100 W

Download 3D model from Uploading

www.northernlighting.no

KIA enRoute business coupe

a professional long distance car for the sustainable future

IMAGINE