Manufacturing engineers and home project hobbyists alike will find Design inSite a useful tool in their design process. The site is maintained by an associate research professor at the Technical University of Denmark, and its purpose is to "inspire designers in their designwork to consider materials and processes which are new or unknown to them." This is accomplished with an impressive set of cross-listed databases that consist of products, materials, and manufacturing processes. The power of the site is apparent from the interconnectivity of these three databases. If you look for information about a particular material, the resulting page of data also lists similar materials and provides examples of products and processes that could be useful in the design. The databases are browseable or searchable using keywords. The only drawback to the Web site is the size of the products database, which only has 120 items; however, the ones that are listed will likely give some insight to spark creative ideas.
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