Do you know why the sludge model should be made in the process of automobile design?

Many people who know about cars know that making a car requires making a sludge model, but do you know why designers need to do this step? Let me tell you something.

Why make a sludge model?

In order to examine the design carefully.

Why do you want to make a sludge model of 1/5?

Except for students, almost no one makes the sludge model of 1/5, and the company will make the sludge model of 1/4 and full scale.

Why should the company make a sludge model of 1/4 instead of directly loading the full-scale model?

Because the automobile industry is still poor, everyone should save some money. This old man who has worked in Europe for several decades earns seven or eight hundred dollars (RMB) an hour. You ask him to make a model of 1/4 a day, and it takes more than a week to make a full-size model. Sludge is also several hundred yuan a catty, 1/4 is lighter than your weight, and the full-size one is heavier than your home. First, make a selection of 5678 1/4, and then make two full-size ones when the bosses have almost the same idea, and finally finalize them at one time. Besides, the pictures drawn by those designers are also messy. It's a waste of time to put a full-scale sludge model directly. We need to set up some models of 1/4 first, so that they can sort out the chaotic three-dimensional thinking.

The reason is very simple, that is, to discuss the gradual process of design.

After the sketch was finalized, it only affirmed the development potential of this theme. Verification and review of 3D is only a further process. After all, many effects and details in the plane effect stage may only be imaginary or visual errors, which may not exist in reality and need to be verified by entity 3D (refer to the visual error diagram, and what does not exist in reality can be identified by vision). Sensually speaking, 2D renderings can't give people an intuitive evaluation of the overall proportion, posture and feelings of various line-surface relationships. A real 3D model can observe and scrutinize whether a line is perfect in space from different angles without dead ends.

It costs money to make a model, and large companies may choose 2-8 potential schemes to make a model at a time. If time and money are not worth it, all models are 1: 1, and the scale model of 1: 5/ 1: 4 is the preliminary screening before the full scale model. Reject the schemes that are not worth continuing, and select 1-2 that can be used to make full-scale models for more comprehensive development. I have also seen some small companies use digital models for internal discussions in the scale model stage, and the entities are directly displayed to customers as full-scale models, which is more meaningful than discussion. However, the sensory transmission of the digital model on the screen is very limited compared with the physical model, which is only an expedient measure to save costs.

In today's increasingly mature digital design, physical models (mainly sludge models) still have irreplaceable importance in automobile design industry. Because the solid model is more intuitive and real than the digital model, it is also more convenient to scrutinize and fine-tune the shape. The price is that the cost is too high, and the predecessors above have fully vomited.

Automobile design, especially shape design, has a very important but subtle evaluation factor, which is the volume of the whole vehicle. For example, whether the curved surface on the car body should protrude a little or retract a little, and whether the curve should be raised by one millimeter or lowered by two millimeters. This very subtle change may bring us a very different feeling about the shape and surface of the whole car, or full of three-dimensional, or dignified and elegant, or full of movement. This repeated adjustment of sludge model is also a very important design optimization process. These processes are difficult to implement on digital models.