At Cad Crowd, we’re big proponents of open innovation. Outside ideas can really help spur innovation and creativity and lead to better, more efficient, and more profitable designs. The crowdsourcing design contests we host are a great way for firms and entrepreneurs to tap into the creative potential of our large and talented pool of designers.
There’s always a wide variety of competitions underway, challenging the Cad Crowd community to come up with unique and effective solutions to all kinds of design problems. But at the end of the day, only one winner takes home the coveted first place prize, and the recognition that goes with it!
Here are some of the contests going down now on Cad Crowd. These contests are still accepting submissions, so designers: get on in there!
1. Mini-ITX Portable Computer Case Design by Saket Trade Links
The Mini-ITX is a wee motherboard designed for small low-noise, low power-consumption computers. This contest holder is looking for a modern-looking aluminum case to house a Mini-ITX based system boasting two Nvidia 1080 video cards and liquid cooling. There’s been quite the medley of different design approaches to this project — it will be exciting to see who wins!
2. The Steam Punk Jet Engine F3 Design by Perspective Designs
This is an interesting contest. The challenge here is to design a steam-punk themed graphic to wrap around the body of a formula 3 race car. The first stage of the contest, underway now, is to come up with some cool artistic ideas that can be turned into 3D models and then rendered into 2D images for the vinyl wrap. This contest is pretty new, but there’s all kinds of creative potential!
3. Ring of Eshu Design by Concadd
Here’s one for all the fantasy geeks out there. The contest here is to produce a CAD design representing the Ring of Eshu as described by J.R.R Tolkien in the Silmarillion and the Lord of the Rings. This contest really digs deep into the fandom. Usually when people think of “the ring from the Lord of the Rings”, they think of a totally different piece of jewelry. Super fans my recognize this ring, the ring of Barahir, as that which is given to Aragorn at Rivendell.
4. LED Light Pipes Project Design by adam
The contest here is to design the LED lighting for a simple promotional electronic device. The device itself is quite simple, but like with many product design projects, the challenge is in designing a product that can be manufactured at the appropriate price point while maintaining a sufficient level of quality. These things need to be produced below $1 per part.
5. Skateboard Rubber Wheel Stoppers Design by PatrickD
Skateboarding is hard. Don’t let anyone tell you that it isn’t. The purpose of this device is to make it a little bit easier by allowing learners to practice tricks while the wheels are kept immobile. The contest is to design an improved version of the device which can be slipped on over the skateboard’s regular wheels to prevent them from rolling. Neat idea.
These are some of the open contests going on now on Cad Crowd! There’s always new ones coming up and there’s always prizes to be won. It’s always free for designers to join, just create a profile! For buyers interested in taking advantage of a design challenge to find innovative solutions to their design problems, you can learn more here or go for it and post your own contest!