Base Footwear Structure for Modular Design Customization
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Solution Overview
Problem
The complexity of constructing new articles of footwear with updated design elements requires significant time and effort, as existing methods involve intricate assembly of multiple components, making it inefficient to create visually distinct footwear variants.
Innovation Solution
A method utilizing a base footwear structure, where design elements can be selectively modified or added to form multiple, distinct articles of footwear, by retrieving a model, selecting design elements, updating the model, and generating the footwear using the updated design elements, thereby streamlining the production process.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If traditional methods are used to construct new articles of footwear with updated design elements, then design customization is achieved, but time consumption and manufacturing effort increase significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The footwear construction process is divided into modular components: a base footwear structure containing common elements (upper, sole structure, tongue) and separate design elements (colors, stitching, overlays, graphics) that can be independently selected and applied. This segmentation allows rapid reconfiguration of design variants without reconstructing the entire footwear article.
Solution Approach 2:
A base footwear structure is prepared in advance containing all common structural elements that will be present in all footwear variants. Design elements are pre-defined and stored for later selection. This preliminary preparation eliminates the need to recreate common elements for each new design, significantly reducing time consumption.
2Adaptability or versatility
If traditional methods are used to construct new articles of footwear with updated design elements, then design customization is achieved, but manufacturing effort increases significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The footwear is segmented into a base structure and interchangeable design elements. The base footwear structure contains all common manufacturing components (upper, sole structure, tongue), while design-specific elements (colors, stitching patterns, overlays, graphics) are separated and applied as needed. This reduces manufacturing effort by eliminating redundant construction steps for common elements.
Solution Approach 2:
The base footwear structure serves as a universal platform that can support multiple different design variants. The same base structure can be combined with different design elements to create numerous distinct footwear articles, reducing overall manufacturing effort across the product line.
3Adaptability or versatility
If multiple distinct articles of footwear are created from scratch, then design variety is achieved, but production efficiency decreases
Solution Approach 1:
The base footwear structure is constructed once and stored for repeated use. All common structural elements are prepared in advance, allowing rapid production of multiple design variants by simply applying different design elements. This dramatically improves production efficiency compared to creating each article from scratch.
Solution Approach 2:
The base footwear structure acts as a template that can be copied and reused across multiple footwear articles. Instead of recreating the entire structure for each design variant, the system copies the base structure and applies different design elements, significantly increasing production efficiency while maintaining design variety.
Data Source
AI summary
A non-transient computer-readable medium can contain instructions for causing a computing system to perform the method of selecting a base footwear structure, the base footwear structure including an upper that is configured to be coupled to a sole structure, retrieving a model of an article of footwear that can be formed from the selected base footwear structure, selecting one or more design elements from a plurality of available design elements associated with the model, updating the model based on the one or more selected design elements, and generating the article of footwear from the updated model. In some examples, the one or more design elements are design elements that can be added to or modified on the base footwear structure to form the article of footwear.