Illuminating More than Product Design

Brazilian designer, Celso Santos, of Rio 21, uses Cobalt™ CAD and 3D modeling software for more than just product design. To him, the best way to maximize his profit on new products in Brazil is to handle not only the design, but the production, packaging, marketing and distribution to retail outlets. Santos finds the 3D capabilities in Cobalt so powerful and easy that he uses it in all areas of his business including packaging, customer assembly instructions, communication with his tool maker, even for his business card.

Cobalt’s powerful Organic Workflow™ paradigm allows Santos to go back and forth between 2D and 3D as he designs and develops a new product like the Luminária RJ 21 table lamp, refining his ideas. Then he uses PDFs of Cobalt’s precision engineering drawings in Adobe products to facilitate discussions and easy design changes with the manufacturing teams. As he tells it:

One great thing about Cobalt precision 3D modeling is the ability to improve our communications. There is not a point that I can’t explain to someone on the other side of the world. I could talk to our tool maker while he was looking at the PDF.

Santos also uses Cobalt to design not only the colorful box in which the Luminária RJ 21 will be sold, but also the assembly instructions to be enclosed as part of the packaging so the customer will know how to put it together. Santos tells us when developing those instructions, “I found that it was much easier to edit things in Cobalt than in Adobe Illustrator.”

Cobalt even makes traditional product photography more efficient. Santos says, “When I go into the studio I already know the angles, the lights and everything that I want because I’ve already made all the trials using Cobalt. So it’s easy to have a very good idea of the final result. We’ve reduced the time of development because of this.”

Even the business cards for Rio 21 are partially designed using Cobalt. Because the card uses a 3D image, Santos discovered it was easier to use Cobalt, do a model-to-sheet, edit any extra lines and then take it into other software to make the layout of the card.

Learn More

Read more about Rio 21’s success using Cobalt CAD and 3D modeling in these three other Ashlar-Vellum proven success stories:

Learn more about Celso’s views on successfully using Cobalt 3D modeling software in these two movies:

See more designs by Rio 21 Design among those in these Galleries:

See more of Rio 21 Design’s work on their website.