CAD moved furniture design from the drawing board to the screen — precision got cheaper, iteration got faster. These were genuine improvements. But a screen is still an abstraction. You can't feel a CAD model. Scale is elusive in a way that only becomes apparent when something exists at full size in an actual room.
3D printing changed something different. It gave designers the ability to hold their own ideas.
The difference between evaluating a design on a screen and holding it as a physical object is harder to overstate than it might seem. Aesthetic judgments that are difficult in the abstract become immediate. Ergonomic questions — how a joint feels when it slides, how much resistance is right in a mechanism — can't really be answered any other way. Tolerances for structural performance can be calculated. Tolerances for feel cannot. We use 3D printing at Desh— to iterate on exactly these kinds of questions. It has changed how we think about connections.
The analogy that feels right: 3D modelling was to drafting as 3D printing is to sculpture. Drafting and modelling describe the thing. Sketching and sculpture produce something you can respond to directly. Each step takes you closer to the real object without committing to making it.
Like sketching, it requires cycles to become useful. We use it for furniture design, but also for the more ordinary problems — organisational solutions, repairs, components that don't exist commercially. The muscle builds through general use as much as specific application.
As a manufacturing revolution it remains, I think, some way off. As a design tool, it has quietly moved things forward.
Compare the production system: Desh- shelving is built from Hangtracks, standards, and metal shelves made for repeatable setup and adjustment.
0 comments