Mechanical design
Complete mechanical design of an industrial installation
A large installation rarely consists of one difficult part. The challenge usually sits in the whole.
Kubuz
Designing complex products.Making them configurable.
I work at the intersection of mechanical design, CAD automation, product configuration and engineering software.
A project might start with a machine or a product. Sometimes with a configurator. Sometimes with a process that still asks for too much handwork. The core is always the same: understand how the whole thing fits together, bring structure to the complexity and build something that keeps working in practice.
01—Practice
01
Mechanical Design
I design machines, structures and technical products from concept to production-ready models and drawings.
02
Engineering Automation
When a product belongs to a family of variants, I try to capture the relationships between those variants in the model.
03
Product Configuration
A configurable product is more than a list of options.
04
Engineering Software
Sometimes a technical problem does not fit well within existing engineering software.
02—Featured work
03—Selected
P.01
Inoxplus
A configurator for stainless worktops where geometry, options, price and quotation start from the same product model.
P.02
A door that is actually a product family
For a manufacturer of highly configurable doors I worked as CPQ engineer on the complex product structures in Autodesk Inventor and Tacton.
2023
P.03
From configuration into manufacturing
For Technics & Applications I worked on a configuration solution for pool covers.
04—Perspective
Engineering and software are not two separate worlds for me.
I start with the product and the process: where does the variation sit, which choices affect each other, and what has to be technically guaranteed? From there, I decide what belongs in CAD, configuration logic or software.
The implementation follows from that understanding, not the other way around.
05—Current research
I regularly build things to understand an idea better. Not every experiment has to become a product.
Idea
A product is more than its geometry
I started building my own geometry kernel because I wanted to generate configurable products faster and more simply in the browser.
E.01
3D Synth
3D Synth is a tool for designing and exploring freer 3D-print toolpaths, treating the Z-axis as a full movement axis rather than only a step between horizontal layers.
E.02
Openframe
Openframe started with a simple question: how far can you get at home with FDM when a bicycle frame is designed around that manufacturing process instead of trying to copy a conventional metal frame?
06—Writing
I also use this site as technical reference.
ASSET NEEDED
Role: Article figure
Preferred ratio: 16 / 9
Suggested export: 1600 × 900 px
Crop: no
CPQ → CPQM: configuration into production sequence
What I mean by CPQM
CPQ stands for Configure, Price, Quote.
EssayGeometry is not the product model
CAD is very good at geometry.
ReferenceRules, constraints and domains — what is the difference?
When people talk about product configuration, rules and constraints are often thrown on one pile.
ASSET NEEDED
Role: Article figure
Preferred ratio: 3 / 2
Suggested export: 1500 × 1000 px
Crop: no
Parametric CAD to configuration: model vs product logic
From parametric CAD to product configuration
I started as a drafter.
ReferenceOpenframe: materials, joints and print strategy
Openframe is not an attempt to reproduce a conventional bicycle frame in plastic. The project explores how a frame changes when FDM, parametric CAD and home fabrication are treated as design conditions from the start.
Openframe v0.2: build, test, redesign
Openframe v0.2 was the first version where the concept could be evaluated as a complete frame. Not only separate lugs and test pieces, but an assembled structure where fit, alignment, stiffness and the first controlled ride tests could be observed.
07—About
I am Dennis Vercauteren. I have worked in mechanical design since 2008 and independently under Kubuz since 2012.
Contact
Do you have a technical product that is hard to configure, asks for a lot of repetitive engineering, or sits somewhere between CAD and software?