2. Computer Aided Design¶

This week was phenomenal in that I got to experience many enjoyable software that had to do with both 2D and 3D designing.

Assignment¶

Model (raster, vector, 2D, 3D, render, animate, simulate, …) possible designs/products to post on our class page.

Testimonial¶

Frankly I would say I enjoyed creating 3D figures way more than I did 2D ones and that is for the mere fact that I found making a very precise and realistic product so fun and intriguing!

The software I did my 3D designs on was Fusion360, which had many functionalities and features making it easily one of the best 3D software despite its notable open-source competitors including OpenSCAD and FreeCAD.

What made my experience better on Fusion 360 was the fact I learned so quickly and was able to view my designs from all angles with ease to understand the areas I did well on and the areas I didn’t necessarily do that well on. In the first session, I learned to 3D design an accurate representation of a coffee mug in 20 minutes since we were tasked to design the first thing we saw in our room. This was a super creative and mind-stimulating exercise since it allowed us to observe, envision, and design our product without having a fixed design in mind for all FabLab students to just copy and design.

I made two versions of the coffee mug. One was during the first session on fusion 360 and another after I experiment and follow online tutorials including videos published by autodesk. Both utilize simple techniques such as sketching, extruding, and filleting.

However, the second version utilizes the revolve functionality in addition to the construct feature to set up a tangent plane for sketching and holing.

Slowly but surely, I was able to implement more and more designs including the better version of the coffee mug I initially designed and chess pieces including a pawn piece design using an outline of my choice.

The outline is as follows:

This is the finished product with the color of my choice:

In regard to the other 3D software, I used OpenSCAD since I am quite fond of coding, and I found that, though enjoyable, this software had a rather steep learning curve when it came to accurate and advanced

Regardless, I enjoyed working on this software. Here is the design of a rook and the associated code on OpenSCAD. I have followed a tutorial step-by-step to ensure my design is correct.

In conclusion, Fusion 360 was the software that won my heart and will be the one I use all throughout my FabLab journey!

For the 2D software, I think my experience was more ‘chill’ as I had to design a very simplistic version of what I designed on the 3D software without having to necessarily worry about which software was better than the other as much. I believe Gimp and Inkscape did the job brilliantly both offering a clean user interface with user-friendly features.

I made simple designs for chess boards following youtube tutorials to complement my 3D-designed chess pieces. Here are the results:

INKSCAPE

GIMP