Designing cars before the age of the computer

In reply to Junkers :

Never wrestle with a pig. You just get dirty and the pig enjoys it.

Junkers said:

93EXCivic said:

In reply to Junkers :

I am not offended it. Your post are just so ignorant and clueless I am laughing my head off at you.

And look at that, it's the tactic of projection displayed in its perfect form.  You seem quite upset.

You all are proving my point to a perfect "T."  You can't debate me at all so you resort to mockery.  My words hurt you, so you feel you have to hurt me.  It's so funny to me too.  I said nothing personal to anyone, but because I criticized something that a few empty people have made into their identity I get a whole load of foolishness.

What was it that hurt you?  Do you play with Star Wars dolls or something?  Do you worship your teachers?  Does moronic music command your attention or trigger fantasies of godhood inside of you?  Who is your authority?  I'd like to know.

Show me where the Star Wars doll touched you.

wvumtnbkr said:

Junkers said:

93EXCivic said:

In reply to Junkers :

I am not offended it. Your post are just so ignorant and clueless I am laughing my head off at you.

And look at that, it's the tactic of projection displayed in its perfect form.  You seem quite upset.

You all are proving my point to a perfect "T."  You can't debate me at all so you resort to mockery.  My words hurt you, so you feel you have to hurt me.  It's so funny to me too.  I said nothing personal to anyone, but because I criticized something that a few empty people have made into their identity I get a whole load of foolishness.

What was it that hurt you?  Do you play with Star Wars dolls or something?  Do you worship your teachers?  Does moronic music command your attention or trigger fantasies of godhood inside of you?  Who is your authority?  I'd like to know.

I am enjoying this.

Me too, haha.

93EXCivic said:

Never wrestle with a pig. You just get dirty and the pig enjoys it.

Yet again and you can only reply with mockery.  You just keep proving my point.  Thank you!

One good tip to those enjoying this show:  If you can draw an emotion out of people, you can make them do anything you say - and there's nothing they can do about it.  Some people will have trouble sleeping tonight because of what I did to them.  And I did it all with a few words that reminded them of their traumatic past.  They'll close their eyes to drop off into sleep and BOOM!  They'll shout a clever reply to me.  But who are they talking to?  Themselves?  You can't talk to your self.  And it won't be to me.  I'll be fast asleep resting well.

I'm still waiting for someone to show up to debate me.   Please send me your best intellectual.

Junkers said:

93EXCivic said:

Never wrestle with a pig. You just get dirty and the pig enjoys it.

Yet again and you can only reply with mockery.  You just keep proving my point.  Thank you!

One good tip to those enjoying this show:  If you can draw an emotion out of people, you can make them do anything you say - and there's nothing they can do about it.  Some people will have trouble sleeping tonight because of what I did to them.  And I did it all with a few words that reminded them of their traumatic past.  They'll close their eyes to drop off into sleep and BOOM!  They'll shout a clever reply to me.  But who are they talking to?  Themselves?  You can't talk to your self.  And it won't be to me.  I'll be fast asleep resting well.

I'm still waiting for someone to show up to debate me.   Please send me your best intellectual.

I love when trolls outright admit to being trolls.  Makes it so much easier for The Powers That Be to remove them if they want.  Otherwise they have to go through all sorts of searching of posts and all sorts of other E36 M3.

No one is going to debate you, not because they are emotionally triggered, but because you're being a berkeleying shiny happy person and have already proven that you don't debate in good faith.

I can all but guarantee that no one here is going to lose sleep over you, sir. I think you might be assuming you have a greater effect on the people here than you actually do. Your grandstanding is verbose and incendiary, but not insightful or earth shattering.

I talk to myself all the time. What do you mean you can't?

Requirements change, so do shapes.  Just how stuff progresses. 
 

btw, I've met a lot of college students over the past decade, and expect to far into the future. The future is quite bright. 

In reply to Junkers :

I am just over here listening to moronic music and dreaming of godhood while worshipping my teachers and playing with star wars dolls. 

I was a pro/am videographer in the years that the industry turned digital. Good analog editors were a wonder to behold. I remember a guy who would edit rock concerts practically in real time. His sense of timing rivaled the musicians.  At the edit facility that I used, digitards were routinely mocked, then as editing suites became affordable and common on PCs we lamented the end of artistry. Now any punk could make edit lists, add effects and create jumbled crap.

But that's not how it turned out.  Sure, the abundance of editing programs and cameras allowed endless terrabytes of garbage to be created, but there's also a lot of videomakers who would not previously have been able to crack the industry who are making very good stuff -  often in poor overseas locales. 

Car design is no different. Look at all the prototypes and startups who are out there either making cars or creating good concepts because of the advantages granted them by CAD/CAM. Aesthetics are subjective, but IMO it's an exciting time. If you don't like what's being made now, it's probably because you prefer what came out in your teens and twenties. That's a basic human trait. That's when we are most excited by life and recording our most vivid memories.

In reply to LeftLaneLoser :

The federal government says you can't because MPG. 

LeftLaneLoser said:

Nooooooooo. Wrong. Bean counters yes, but wind tunnel simulation is what the designers are hampered by. They might want to recreate a caddy tail fin, but that computer aided wind tunnel sim says you can't, and it's too expensive. 

This is a design requirement.  A non-computer-aided wind tunnel would say the same thing.  It has nothing to do with the computer.

Turbo_Rev said:

In reply to LeftLaneLoser :

The federal government says you can't because MPG. 

I don't think tail fins have any impact on fuel economy.  Lots of cost and complexity, but little drag.

But if all you want is to easily blame someone that has no real input, well...

LeftLaneLoser said:

Nooooooooo. Wrong. Bean counters yes, but wind tunnel simulation is what the designers are hampered by. They might want to recreate a caddy tail fin, but that computer aided wind tunnel sim says you can't, and it's too expensive. This forum has gone to hell. 

Dude, you're being dumb, or purposefully missing the point of what everyone else is telling you; I'm not sure which.

ProDarwin said:

LeftLaneLoser said:

Nooooooooo. Wrong. Bean counters yes, but wind tunnel simulation is what the designers are hampered by. They might want to recreate a caddy tail fin, but that computer aided wind tunnel sim says you can't, and it's too expensive. 

This is a design requirement.  A non-computer-aided wind tunnel would say the same thing.  It has nothing to do with the computer.

Wait when you designing something your computer doesn't say "I can't allow that Dave."? 

Junkers said:

 

Oh, and that SR-71 that Kelly Johnson designed was 100% intuitively formed.  He simply KNEW (without knowing how he knew) how to shape and design that aircraft to incomparable PERFECTION.  He even intuitively designed the ramjet engines and the system of ducts that bypassed and fed the core turbojet engines.  If he were educated in today's school system, he would have been medicated by age 5 and a high school dropout by age 16.  He was educated in a one-room schoolhouse.

 

This is 100% BS.  The SR71 was tons of engineering and science that designed and built it.  And Kelly Johnson did not design the engines.  BTW, the fact that the air in the engines needed to be sub-sonic was known by then, and how to do it was known as well.  So that adjustable nozzle design was just more extreme due to the speed, not because one person thought of something magical.

Also, given the state of the art of computers, I'd be pretty darned confident that computers were used in the design of the SR71, just because the math was so time consuming.  Pretty much every equation that goes into any design was well known by the time the SR71 was done- it was just a matter of how to apply them.  The longer the math took, the simpler the design would have to be.

I know auto OEM's were using computers to help the design process.

As for intuition, I do agree that it's incredibly important.  But in my experience as an engineer, it's still very much part of new engineers coming out of school.  If your hires don't have that, well, look someplace else.  In addition to that, though, new engineers have no problem diving into using computers for new things- in ways I'm just not going to invest learning how to do.  

Hell, computers were used to determine the suspension geometry of the GT40.

stafford1500 said:

That's not quite true. I spend a pretty serious amount of time in wind tunnels on actual race cars. The production usage of the tunnels is still pretty strong too. There is always signs of clay work on the floor. CFD (computational fluid dynamics) can get you pretty far, but the tunnel results can be generated in minutes and give a complete car measure of the performance versus hours to days for CFD. However CFD is used to get directions. Tunnel results can/are used to provide the drag numbers that help drive the CAFE numbers...

I didn't mean to imply CFD has replaced wind tunnels, just that it's cheaper, especially for people that have to rent them and there are multiple configurations to test.

For production cars tunnels are also used to analyze wind noise. That's getting to be important with silent running electric cars.

One of my favorite design stories is all about a beer can.

Frank Stephenson explains what a can of Budweiser and the new MINI have in common:

“We worked a number of 24-hour days trying to get the full-sized clay model completed for presentation to the board of directors,” says Stephenson. “So when we finished the job with just hours to spare, I thought it appropriate that the team have a beer or two to celebrate. That's when I spotted the problem.”

That problem was the complete absence of an exhaust tip on the otherwise complete clay. Thinking quickly, Stephenson stripped the paint from his beer can, punched a hole in the bottom, and fixed it in place on the model.

It wasn't long before he was called on the carpet by his boss at BMW. “It wasn't the shape (of the tip),” he says, “everybody liked it because it was unique yet oddly familiar. He was concerned that I had wasted a modeler's time milling the piece when his time could be better spent elsewhere. That was when I felt the need to confess.”

93EXCivic said:

In reply to Junkers :

I am just over here listening to moronic music and dreaming of godhood while worshipping my teachers and playing with star wars dolls. 

I got two Chewbaccas.  You got a Luke you wanna trade?

In reply to alfadriver :

Yeah, man, that's like my favorite thing to do. 

Shoot. It looks like Left Lane Loser's gone away. I wanted to try this on him: 

In reply to Kreb (Forum Supporter) :

90% of everything is, indeed, crap.

I wonder if boring automotive design is partially due to modern manufacturing strategy.  The Big 3 took wild risks with automotive styling in the 50s and 60s because they would restyle the cars every model year.  You could easily tell the difference between a '63 and a '64 and a '65.  So there was less of a cost to the risk, because if it flopped, it was just for the one year.  If it was wildly successful, they had a new direction to move in.

In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :

Well, one can counter argue that because they were doing year over year changes, they had to be radical to make people want a new car when they didn't need one.  Sort of like how some do electronics these days.  Now, because models need to last quite few model years, you can't be polarizing on the design.

And I would also point out that most cars way back then were not great looking cars.  Only the classics that we remember.  The rest have just drifted into nothing.

Exner era Chryslers should be wiped from history. uGh...