Joe Donnelly interfaces with designers who create sparks by throwing fresh perspective on the working world

YOU want an office, kitted out with desks, computers, coffee machine . . . the works. Or maybe you're planning to open an up-market restaurant with the classiest of layouts and materials. You have the choice of spending hours poring over catalogues. Or you can simply go for a virtual walk round the premises of your choice, choosing styles, colours, and everything else that will make it the most efficient, or comfortable, or just plain pleasant.

Scots design firm Buccleuch takes its customers on just such a virtual stroll, using the latest computer-aided design systems. It can create 3-D views and different perspectives through which clients can walk so they can see what their office or restaurant or factory will look like.

The Edinburgh firm has been at the cutting edge of technology for half a century. It was originally set up to manufacture radio sets during the war and has since diversified widely into areas such as engineering, and manufacture of office and contract furniture.

The Buccleuch Business Interiors division uses AutoCAD AEC as a major weapon in its fight to capture the Scottish market. It designs, develops, and manufactures furniture and takes pride in the design and manufacture of bespoke solutions for clients - a service which includes space planning, developing the furniture, and installation.

All this involves a huge amount of detailed design work which would take hours, maybe weeks of illustration time, but for their CAD system based on AutoCAD which is a design standard.

Robert Bunch, design manager and grandson of the founder of this family company, explains: ``Within our specialised market the ability to allow clients to visualise what their office or restaurant will look like is essential.

``Only five years ago we were doing all designing and draughting manually. Most of our competitors were already using CAD but only in two dimensions, so we decided that if we wanted to use computer-assisted design, we should go one better and use 3-D.''

Bunch states: ``The benefits of AutoCAD AEC were readily apparent, for it makes it easy to quickly create a plan of the office using its routines for standard architectural objects, such as doors, walls, or staircases.

``In addition, it allows us to build models of our own designs of furniture and select them from the menus. It speeds up sophisticated drawing time by a factor of 10.''

After the virtual stroll with the client, the firm's craftsmen use computers to fine tune the design of the designer furniture, before making sparks fly in the manufacture.

n A SUPERCOMPUTER has been recruited to help solve a major mystery of why it takes up to 100,000 times more energy to break apart adhesive bonds than expected? The findings could one day help scientists in their quest to produce the ultimate super-strong adhesives.

Logic suggests that the amount of energy needed to break an adhesive bond, like the glue between two pieces of wood, should be equal to the number of molecules bonded together within the area of the glued surface, times the energy needed to break one molecular bond.

But it doesn't work that way. Somewhere along the way a lot of extra energy, is being used to do some sort of work associated with breaking adhesive bonds. Understanding the nature of the discrepancy could help scientists make the ultimate glue; the more energy it takes to break bonds, the stronger the adhesive.

Using a computer model, researchers at Johns Hopkins have observed for the first time what happens at the atomic level when bonded surfaces are pulled apart. In the computer simulation, an adhesive is placed between two plates and then the plates are pulled apart. As the plates are moved further and further apart, holes open up at the weakest points of the bonded surface then grow in a series of little jerks, before finally snapping as the surfaces come apart.

The final stage can be seen when a piece of tape, or a Band-Aid, is pulled off of a surface. Thin tendrils of adhesive are visible as they stretch and finally snap as the tape is pulling away from the surface.

The results could bring a new range of superglues with bonds that just can't be broken.