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| Best Online Free Tools & Resources For Industrial Designers |
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| Written by waikit | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Sunday, 29 March 2009 11:36 | ||||||||||||||||||||
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I have made a collection of the best and useful online tools & resources for industrial designers, most of them picked from different threads from the forums. Textures Textures are basically pictures of materials that can be projected on a model to stimulate the visual characteristics of the real material.
Free Stock Images Beautiful stock images for your presentations, mood boards and persona collages. Always check the terms & conditions before you use the images.
Persona Collage Creator Polyvore - A quick and easy tool to create collages for persona
Color Inspiration & Tools
Adobe Kuler - Application for generating color themes that can inspire any project COLOURlovers - A resource that monitors and influences color trends. COLOURlovers gives the people who use color - whether for ad campaigns, product design, or in architectural specification - a place to check out a world of color, compare color palettes, submit news and comments, and read color related articles and interviews. Color Blender - Tool for color matching and palette design
Portfolio Hosting You should know the following portfolio hosting tools
Image Hosting & Sharing Pict.com - Fast and easy to use image hosting tool, without registration, crowded ads and bandwidth limitations. You can upload as many images (JPG, GIF and PNG) as you want at the same time and they are stored for life time if you follow their terms and conditions. Only JPG, GIF and PNG image file types can be uploaded. You can even save your favorite images from the web by uploading from the URL of the image.
Salary/Hour Rate Indicators AIGA Salary Calculator - Based on US surveys Freelanceswitch Hourly Rate Calculator - Based on your costs, number of billable hours and desired profit. PayScale - Salary Comparison, Salary Survey, Wages
Invoicing Tools FreshBooks - Invoicing application for freelancers and small business owners. You can easily create professional looking invoices and you can make use of a time tracking tool to bill your clients by hour. The free membership allows you to manage unlimited invoices for a maximum of 3 clients. Blinksale is similar to FreshBooks, but it is more simpler in functions, as it has no time tracking tool. The free membership allows you to send 3 invoices per month.
Patents Databases: Search for patents to check if your idea is new or done before like 10 years ago, before applying for your patent to protect your innovative design to prevent unnecessary costs. Material Databases IdeMat - A tool for material selections in the design process, provides a database with technical information about materials, processes and components. MatWeb - Searchable database of material properties includes data sheets of thermoplastic and thermoset polymers The A to Z of Materials - Material database Ecolect - Discover green materials
Anthropometric Data NASA Anthropometry & Biomechanics
Survey Tools Always useful to get your design research insights with surveys
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Comments (6)
Vishal
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Managing Partner - Product Designer Dear Waikit, Thanks for the list of really useful n important resources. There are some here that I've always been really in need of. I shall forward this link to my juniors from college too. Regards, Vishal. |
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waikit
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Comments are much appreciated Dear Vishal, Thanks for leaving a comment. I am glad to hear from someone, that this list is useful, which I really appreciate. Cheers, Waikit |
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Jose
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Industrial Designer Hi Waikit, Great links! Thanks for posting. Some I've never seen before. Jose |
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Shaukat Ameen
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Very Helpful! Thank you very much for this useful list. I especially liked the Salary Rate Indicator. Thanks again. Regards. |
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Vahid Anwari
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Thanks awesome collection. Please expand it to add job sites and also some tutorials. kepp up the good work. |
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