Green-tech design tool helps clean-tech designer
It wouldn’t be very green of a clean-tech company to waste lots of materials while designing and developing and testing its product, would it?
Autodesk sure doesn’t think so. The well-established CAD software company continues to reposition some of its core 3-D products as great tools for digital prototyping of products. One example of how companies are using its software is Green Ocean, a renewable energy company that is focused on using wave energy and the power of the ocean to create electricity.
Green Ocean was recently named Autodesk Inventor of the Month for its use of Autodesk Inventor in the creation of its Ocean Treader and Wave Treader devices, which are still in the testing phase.
Ocean Treader is a buoy-like device, while the Wave Treader is usually mounted to a more static offshore winder or tidal turbine. Both create electricity by harvesting energy from the water with hydraulic cylinders.
Green Ocean used Autodesk’s software to create models that it used to test how its devices could withstand rough waters in the North Atlantic Ocean. The models have been used in indoor wave-pool tests; Grean Ocean is raising funds to develop a full-size prototype that it will test in the open ocean starting in 2011.
Here’s a video interview with Green Ocean that provides more perspective on this green design tool.