Our achievements can be attributed in no small part to our willingness to keep up with " and embrace " new technological developments. In particular, integrating 3D processes has been incredibly advantageous to our product development efforts. It plays as big a role in getting bikes into manufacturing plants overseas as in the basic design.

Performance and Aesthetics Putting together a Marin Bike is no small endeavor. We are committed to building a bicycle that is superbly engineered, lightweight yet durable, and designed to give riders the highest quality experiences for years to come. A few of the areas that we pay attention to in every bike:

Butting. Butting is the art of tailoring a bike frame's tubing wall thickness. Our frames feature double and triple butted tubing sections. High stress areas near welds are reinforced by creating thicker tubing wall; areas of lower stress are designed with a reduced wall thickness in order to minimize weight and improve vertical compliance.

Custom dropouts. In order to accommodate advanced brake technologies, optimize functionality, and maintain high durability levels, we have designed a series of CNC and forged dropouts. The resulting stiffness of the rear end translates into a more reactive ride, which will track and handle better in even the most unforgiving of terrains.

Seat and chain stays. Designed to be light, torsionally rigid, and offer shock absorption properties, our customer seat and chain stay designs play a critical role in providing a responsive yet plush feel.

Suspension. A more efficient suspension system is going to handle the terrain better and transmit fewer vibrations to the rider. Our QUAD-Link suspension system has been carefully engineered to provide a superior ride.

Wheel to shock ratio. Most suspension bikes drive the shock off a rotating linkage with a fixed pivot center. This has the effect of making the shock movement proportional to the wheel movement throughout the travel. With the QUAD-Link system the shock is driven directly off the swingarm. Quick links. Shorter links are faster to react, lighter and considerably stiffer. Our links are only 35mm long. The high speed at which the links can move allows rapid controlled shifts in the IPC. Additionally, the links are outside the wheel circumference, allowing us to anchor them to the frame in two places: on the seat tube and down tube. This is a considerably stiffer method of construction than having links connected to each other with small bolts inside the wheel circumference.

Intelligent Wheel Path. By allowing the wheel to move backwards early in its travel, the QUAD-Link system's ability to respond to square edged bumps is unparalleled. Even the smallest bump activates the suspension, keeping the wheel in constant contact with the ground and improving traction.

Aesthetics. Engineering requirements are only part of the story. We also need our bikes to look good. If people are going to spend a lot of money on a bike, they need to like the way it looks. The importance of aesthetic appeal can't be discounted.

Moving Designs Into Production
Our bikes, for the most part, are assembled overseas. Once we're confident in our design, we're able to communicate it effectively " and without ambiguity " to our overseas manufacturing vendors. For example, our frame vendor uses a series of powerful hydraulic tools to inflate pieces of aluminum into the final tube shape. The nice thing about giving them a 3D drawing is that you know what you're going to get: there's no misinterpretation or room for guessing or "filling in the blanks". You're not going to wind up with someone coming up with his or her own idea of what the final shape is, based on 2D drawings. The shape is the shape.

As a result, we can do a lot of the engineering and strength testing inside the computer, and cut out a lot of R&D sample stuff, prototypes, and testing. And ultimately, if we can do the first prototype or first few versions of the prototype inside the computer, then we're not wasting the resources of doing it in real life, thus reducing waste and saving time and money. And often, in real life, first-run prototypes aren't going to be that useful anyway " they are just going to be cobbled together by whatever is laying around on the floor.

By giving 3D models directly to our suppliers, we're getting fewer mistakes and more consistent results the first time around, rather than a whole bunch of give and take. Product revisions are way down, whereas before, you'd get a first sample and it would be a handmade thing and you'd have to go through a couple of different generations to get everything to work out. So much of that early prototyping can be done in the computer, so that nowadays, the first manufactured part you get is something that is workable and usable.

3D = Better Design, Better Product It's no accident that we're able to pack so much engineering excellence into each bike: it's a result of successfully keeping up with technology and integrating 3D into our processes. That increase in functionality allows us to deliver new product innovations (like the aforementioned) each and every year.

Although we had used AutoCAD for years to achieve superior design performance, we saw Autodesk Inventor as the natural progression to stay ahead of the technology curve and keep making improvements to our bikes. Autodesk Inventor is the world's best-selling 3D mechanical design software and the best choice for AutoCAD users making the move to 3D. In addition to providing support for 2D design data, Autodesk Inventor utilizes dynamic 3D models that help reduce errors in the design process.

One of the key aspects of 3D is that it lets us put a real premium on aesthetics. For years, a lot of bicycles on the market had a really industrial look and feel to them: straight edges and square corners. We wanted our bike designs to take more of a cue from natural surroundings. After all, when you look around at nature " like the way a tree tapers into the ground " you don't see a lot of straight edges.

What 3D has allowed us to do is create shapes that are much more natural, flowing and organic. These non-industrial shapes are incorporated into the frames, and the cross sections change in 3D as you move from one end of the tube to the other. That'd be much more difficult to accomplish with just 2D.

And while looks are important, 3D is also critical in the other part of the equation: making sure every component of the bike works properly. 3D models allow us to build the product virtually on our computers and check for interferences and overlaps before we even build our first prototype.

The beauty of Autodesk Inventor is that it gives you these expanded capabilities while still accommodating 2D. Often, we'll generate a 3D model of one of our frames, and then create a 2D drawing off of it to call out certain dimensions. This 2D dimension drawing can be edited in AutoCAD, and then the changes are reflected in Autodesk Inventor. Overall, both 2D and 3D work seamlessly together, which has been a key element of success within our organization.

Conclusion: Ready to Roll As a result of incorporating 3D into our product development operations, we have been able to create a wider array of bikes than ever before in company history " and, more importantly, put them into production and bring them to market in a timely manner. Over the course of a year, Marin Bikes has gone from offering three new products in its catalog to offering 24 new products " an eight-fold increase.

This is what adopting new technology is all about: positioning your organization for success. By successfully leveraging 3D, we have created a diverse selection of high-performance, aesthetically sophisticated bikes that further our reputation in the minds of our customers and better serve the market.

About the Author: Jason Faircloth is a Product Manager and Designer for Marin Bikes .