Measuring Simplicity in Mechanical Design

Abstract

Mechanical designers strive to create a simple design that will reduce product’s cost and increase its reliability. Simple design means function sharing and elimination of redundant parts and as result reduction and prevention of waste. In this sense, simple design follows the ideas of sustainable design. This paper presents an experimental method for measuring the simplicity of a mechanical design. It also presents a quantitative metric for evaluating the simplicity of product design based on quantifiable design parameters. The simplicity metric was developed by using experts’ evaluations of functionally equivalent products. The dominant parameter for predicting an expert’s simplicity rating is the number of features required to fully define the examined computer-aided design (CAD) model. This parameter is highly correlated with two additional measured design parameters: number of parts and number of interfaces between parts