Prototyping is the process in which experimental models are made, which is an important tool in the industrial world to help test new products and designs. By prototyping, or simulating real world examples, industrial businesses can save time, money, and prevent major losses if a design happens to fail or needs more work. There are several different kinds of prototypes and many companies that specialize in prototyping. Today, many industrial companies hire businesses that use rapid prototyping to produce prototypes.
Engineers often come up with new designs in order to create new product(s) or improve on an already existing product. But before any new product design can be put in place, it needs to be tested. Most of the time it's too expensive and too time consuming to build and test the actual new design. Therefore, creating prototypes is more practical to test out new designs. Many times, several prototypes are built before a final design is approved.
Prototypes can put into four basic categories: Proof-of-Principal, Form Study, Visual Prototype, and Functional Prototype.
With a proof-of-principal prototype - how the new design will be created, how it will look, and what materials will be needed, and so forth, are not taken into much consideration. The main focus of a proof-of-principal prototype is to be a diagnostic phases used to find out (prove) whether or not a design approach is feasible, or it will need further development and testing.
In a form study, the prototype is made to study the “form,” as the name states, of the newly created design. This model is intended to be the actual size of the final product, with its essential shape, as a way for the designers to best judge how the new design will look and feel. In other words, “form study”, is a product sculpting, typically hand made from inexpensive materials since the function of the design is not being tested.
Visual prototypes concentrate solely on the aesthetics, determining how a product or design will appear is important for marketing purposes. These prototypes are sometimes used in extensive marketing and public relations campaigns designed to build hype and to gauge feedback and responses.
A functional prototype is perhaps the most complicated and inclusive of all the prototypes, which attempts to simulate the real design as much as possible. It is like having a proof-of-principal, form study, visual and functional prototype all in one. In some cases, this is the final step before the actual design is produced.
However, even with all the different types of prototypes, there can still be design flaws once the final product is produced. That’s because prototypes are not the actual design produced so no absolute results can be determined. But prototypes are still very useful to eliminate as much, if not all, flaws from a new design or product. Sometimes, several rounds of prototypes may have to be created before all flaws or possible failures are discovered.
With the advancement of computers and new animated computer programs, a new type of prototyping has been developed called rapid prototyping. Rapid prototyping first appeared in the 1980s; and by using animated software such computer-aided design (CAD), three-dimensional prototypes can be created on the computer. From these three dimensional designs a prototype can sometimes be built in just a matter of hours.