Ben Walker of Black Diamond on NX and Dramatically Shortened Design Cycles

“The biggest challenge our type of products present is that it forces the design team to understand what it is our customers want and need. You can look at market research or study up on these activities, but it’s not easy to watch someone climbing and get a true understanding of what they’re doing or how they’re using the equipment. You have to be in their shoes to truly understand what they want.”

That’s what Ben Walker, director of R&D from Black Diamond, recently told Design News in this Walk a Mile in Your Ski Boots article. Ben presented at last week’s Innovation Leadership Summit.  With passionate climbers as the company’s key strategic asset, Black Diamond knows what makes a great product versus merely a good one, and where there are opportunities for improvement.

Black Diamond leverages our NX and NX Nastran software to work on large design projects including ski boots and skis. In 2005, Black Diamond expanded its product development scope to address design to engineering sampling. Using NX freeform modeling along with NX Nastran analysis, Black Diamond shortened the design cycle from one-two months down to one-two days. Find out more in this video summary from Ben:



– Branco Liu

If you’re interested in hearing more on Black Diamond, check out Jerry’s previous Director’s Cut blog post with additional interviews with the design team.