Create an ‘MVP’ 3D model for your hardware startup in an hour

8 min readJul 25, 2017

A friend and fellow co-founder recently asked me to give him a quick tutorial on how to use SolidWorks so he could model up an ‘MVP’ model for conversations with his Contract Manufacturer (CM). Like many people, he was very reluctant to get into CAD modeling for the various headaches and frustrations that come with it, but after being quoted between $3–10k for some simple 3Ds he knew he‘d have to figure something out on his own.

But, this got me thinking…

Why is 3D modeling still such a scary concept today?

In today’s day and age there are much better tools than there were even just 5 years ago — software and user interface design have come a long way to alleviate many of the common frustrations. So, while SolidWorks is an amazingly powerful piece of software and it certainly has its uses, I instead opted to steer him towards Autodesk’s Fusion 360.

Fusion has a much lower bar for entry and it lays out the tools you need for 95% of design work in a much more accessible way. Best of all, its free while your starting out!

So, in a single 45 min. Skype call, we were able to go over his product’s key design requirements, I was able to walk him through the basics of modeling in Fusion, and at the end I was able to deliver him an ‘MVP’ model of his design that we built in Fusion during the call.

Defining and showing how to create your own ‘MVP’ 3D model (in under an hour) will be the focus of this post.

As an aside, it should be mentioned that this post assumes you’ve already gone through your initial design phase. Wherein, you identify the problem you’re trying to solve, who your customers are, what your key design features are, and you’ve already got a rough sketch of what you think your product should look like.

If you haven’t done those things yet, I recommend filling out Bolt’s Product Requirements Document and getting sketching!

So, lets start by getting you in the right mindset…

3D modeling, and product design in general, is done in layers. You slowly build up layers of complexity and in doing so it allows you to get closer to your design. With each subsequent layer, the next becomes clearer and how to implement it becomes easier to conceptualize.

It’s important to keep this in mind as you get started — remember, your first model won’t have every detail, feature, or necessary functionality. You’ll start macro in your first layers and as you continue modeling you’ll eventually work your way down into your detailed layers.

The key is to get the ball rolling — start with your large shapes / volumes first.

Let’s define the Minimum Viable Model…

Up till now I’ve loosely been referring to this mystical ‘MVP’ 3D model, let’s go ahead and give it a definition (and by definition I mean “Matt’s proposal at what a Hardware Minimum Viable Model should contain”).

Your Minimum Viable Model (MVM) should:

Convey shape — give viewers 75–90% of an idea of the desired form factor of your product.
Convey dimensions and scale — overall length/width/height, wall thicknesses, hole diameters, etc. should be included and accurate.
Show critical design features — a sloped floor, a drain at the bottom of a tub, a removable end cap, two halves of a clamshell, a giant cut out for your electronics bay, etc.

Your MVM doesn’t necessarily need:

Intricate details — threads, mechanical inner workings, surface textures/patterns, etc.
Finishing components — gears, chains, pulleys, slides, springs, gaskets, buttons, PCBs, etc.
Manufacturing features — structural ribs, alignment pins, etc.

At the end of the day you should be able to take the model and convey each design requirement/feature to an engineer, a contract manufacturer, or your mom for that matter such that they are able to see your vision. Nailing your MVM is going to make conveying your design to other people that much easier.

Now, some might say that’s a stout list of requirements to define just a minimum model — and I would tend to agree, however, I’m proposing this MVM such that when you hand it off to other engineers, designers, or manufacturers they should have enough specifications to get started.

Don’t be afraid to go out of order…

Before we get started, remember, one of the coolest things about Fusion 360 (and many other modern CAD tools) is that you have the ability to rewind and playback your design.

This allows you to go back and make tweaks, or add completely new design features:

So let’s get started with this whole 3D modeling business…

For this quick and dirty 1 hour example I’ll model the closest thing to me: my Yeti Tumbler (filled to the top with coffee, as it should be).

In our design we’ll assume it’s a simple foam insulated tumbler as opposed to Yeti’s design which utilizes a much more efficient double wall vacuum insulated system.

Below, I will break down the macro steps to give you a gist of how to think about the layers involved in your model. Remember, start big and work your way down to the detail layers.

1. 2D Shapes

Firstly, we’ll create our 2D sketches from which we’ll build the overall volume of our Tumbler:

Steps I took:

Draw a circle with the Tumbler’s base diameter on the XZ plane (‘ground’)
Create an offset plane from the circle, up to the desired height of the Tumbler
Draw a circle in this new offset plane with the Tumbler’s maximum diameter

2. Extrude / Loft

This step takes our 2 dimensional sketches and creates a 3 dimensional body:

Steps I took:

Use the Loft tool by selecting your base sketch first then select the sketch you would like to extrude/loft to second

3. Shell

Here we’ll use Shell to hollow out the internal of our Tumbler:

Steps I took:

Use the Shell tool under Modify, select the Body you’d like to shell (selecting from the Browser to the left is easiest), and input your desired wall thickness

4. Split your body

Now that we have a shelled body we need to cut the top off of it so that we have a proper beverage receptacle:

Steps I took:

Draw a line in the XY plane
Move the line down to your desired cutting location
Use the Split Body tool under the Modify heading, select the body first then the cutting tool (the line we just created)
Hide the unneeded body (the top in our case)

5. (bonus) Modify a design feature

Here I’ll quickly show how to go back and make modifications to your design without losing your progress. Specifically, I will change the wall thickness from 2.5 mm to 5.0 mm:

Steps I took:

Locate and double click the Shell command from the timeline at the bottom of the window
Input your new wall thickness

Note: I anticipated this design modification in advance and accounted for it in Step 4 by moving my cut line down to 5.00 mm instead of just 2.50 mm. The proper way to have done this would have been to align/tie the line we drew, to the top of the internal volume — this would have allowed us to input any wall thickness and the splitting line would automatically be placed in the appropriate spot to cut the top off.

MVM Achieved!

Success! We now have a model we can take to an Industrial Designer and say ‘Hey, could you make this look beautiful and modern?,’ or to a Contract Manufacturer and say ‘Hey, could you make this double walled with a foam insulator in between?’

From this MVM we‘ve got many different options, I’ll add some finer details in a video at the end of the post that takes the model from our MVM (~75% finished) and polishes it up a bit (~85–90% finished).

The final 10–15% in our particular case includes things such as making the bottom a separate ‘tub,’ making the walls into double walls, and adding foam in-between the double walls.

Additionally, as in any product design cycle, there are other various Design for Manufacturing and Assembly (DFMA) tweaks that will need to be made prior to going into manufacturing. Below I’ve included a brief synopsis with some examples:

Manufacturing specific tweaks within DFMA (often referred to as just DFM or Design for Manufacturing) would include things such as manufacturing method/material specific tweaks, the addition of draft angles, ensuring minimum/maximum thickness requirements are met, adjusting design feature sizes or radii to account for tooling limitations, etc.

Assembly specific tweaks on the other hand, would include things such as optimizing where the bottom of the Tumbler mates up to the main cup section such that number of steps, the touch time, and the external material (glue, foam, etc) costs are all minimized.

DFM and DFMA are both sciences within themselves and are typically handled by your Contract Manufacturer, Mechanical Engineers, or Manufacturing partners — generally you’ll be getting external help with this step.

Conclusion

I hope this primer was useful and gives you the confidence to give 3D modeling your product a shot! With price quotes in the $3-10k range for initial modeling work — just getting the ball rolling and creating your first MVM should save you considerable dollars.

More importantly than budget though, the exercise of physically modeling your product will provide you priceless feedback on the design and could potentially highlight design defects you wouldn’t have discovered until much later in your design cycle.

Anyway, get out there and create your own MVM! Remember, it’s like an onion.