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The Lone Inventor: Tutorials |
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| Designing it |  Tutorial published by: TheLoneInventor, on 2005-01-10
This should help you to determine whether an invention is in your area of expertise or not, and what to do for each situation.
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| 1 --->Mentally engineer the invention | The first step in designing your invention would definately be to see if you can. You do this by mentally engineering the device. Think about it from all angles, and make it work in your mind before you ever put pen to paper.
Break the whole into smaller more managable pieces
Dont't think about the whole complex issue. Take a hint from computer programmers who are faced with incredible logical obstacles. They divide and conquer the problem by breaking it into smaller pieces. Engineer small pieces of the invention first. When you are satisfied with them, document them and move on. When you are finished with the smaller parts, go ahead and assenble them into a whole, trying all the while to imagine possible problems with the design. | | [ Up ] |
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| 2 ------>Are you able to design it? | You must decide if you are actually able to design your invention. Perhaps you have had difficulty mentally engineering your invention, and are becomming discouraged. You must determine all the challenges involved and prepare to meet them.
What are you good at?
If you 've had difficulty with mental engineering, then you are probably asking this question already. Try to stick with innovation that you can completely comprehend. To do so is called staying within your area of knowledge or expertise.
You may be well versed in the area of your invention, and in this case should have no difficulty at all putting it together and making it work. If this is the case for you, then the invention is considered to be within your area of expertise. If you had difficulty mentally engineering your invention anyway, perhaps that method is not best for you. You will have to discover what that is. Some people prefer to go out and put the thing together with out even so much as drawing it. If this is you, why are you still stuck to the computer screen, waste no time!
If however you do not know the first place to start with mentally engineering, let alone producing your invention, you may need to get some help. Don't be discouraged, your invention will still succeed, but you will have to contribute more monitarily to see that happen.
If help is not your style, or money is tight, then you had better get cracking! You must learn all about the various technologies that will be at work within your invention. This can be accomplished quickly, but depending on the complexity of the innovation plan on spending some extra time schooling yourself about every intricacy of your own invention. | | [ Up ] |
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| 3 ------>Where do I go for help? | Fortunatly for Inventors this problem is getting easier to solve. Do not at all take this as failure! It mearly helps to steer you down a particular road toward success with your invention.
With access to the internet, you can find prototypers, engineers, inventor's groups, and other resources to help you out with the development, or at least point you in the right direction.
Everyday there is another potential resource for inventors going online around the world. Manufacturers are beccoming a large part of the presence on the web. Rapid prototypes now even let you design your own parts and get real time pricing for the item(s).
Who else will help?
There are, and you have probably seen "invention development firms" that go by various names. They promise to give you a free ride to the top if they like your idea. This is seldom, if ever the case. The truth is, the only person you will never have to get approval to produce your invention from is you, and even then sometimes you ask too many questions. :) | | [ Up ] |
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| 4 --->Draw illustrations in your inventor's notebook | You may want to start sketching on scratch paper first, but as soon as you are ready, put it into your notebook.
It's okay if you aren't picaso
Just as long as the idea gets the point accross. Use some of the simple tips below to keep your drawings nice and neat.
Draw in 3D if at all possible.
Draw lines for each component, and label them with numbers or letters.
Draw a blow up of smaller parts | | [ Up ] |
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| 5 ------>Use a CAD program to help you | If you are not especially impressed with drawing the invention, consider using a CAD program. There are many good programs available around the net for free, and they export in common formats.
How do you get a CAD drawing into the notebook?
Render all the images neccessary, print them and paste them into your notebook. Most CAD programs have 3D rendering and printing capability, if yours doesn't find one that does. Again, you should be able to find one free. Here is a short list of programs I have used.
Alice
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| 6 --->Where to go from here | Don't give up!
Some inventors may choose to have someone else design, draw, and prototype thier invention anyway. If money is no option, and you don't have much time to spare, you might just want to use someone else to preform these services.
Let's go on to the next section! Recording your invention. | | [ Up ] |
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