Project 3

Kicking this project into gear.

I wanted to base the design of my mouse off of a 'HALO' video game weaponry. This was done through emulating the core lines of the weapons- sharp edged yet structured and geometric. I started the project off by creating projected curves based on these sketches...














I made sure all curves had nice curves using the spline checking tool...

I started making the first lofts using projected curves for reference...

I then added some surface fills...

More lofts and surfaces...

You can see in the image above that there is a parting line in the front bottom loft. This is because it was made up of a mirrored spline. In the image below you can see that I made the sketch one continuous spline to get rid of the parting line...

As you can see below at the side - rear of the part, when I thickened the surface it produced self intersecting geometry. I resolved this by creating a surface offset and lofting/ filling the open surfaces to form a fully enclosed surfaced part. I then knitted all of the surfaces together and used the 'form solid' option.
Everything else went smoothly as far as making extrudes and cuts to form fastening features, scroll wheel, battery casing etc...

Holy crap, it has taken 25 minutes to complete ONE frame pass!!?? That is dinosauricly, monolithically slow... I am pretty sure that it is because I am maxing out my ram (i only have 2 gb... ) and freezing up the computer. I restarted the computer and reduced the texture / bump mapping options as I thought these might be the main contributor to the geometrey cache being over 1.5 gb and thusly overhaulling my computer's ram (a lowly 2 gb of ram...).

I need a new computer... um hello centerlink?? -_'-
Well eventually all of the renders were completed (this time with only a max 30 MB geometry cache) and the animation. I started the project on 30/6/2014 and finished it on 2/7/2014 so i think i did a pretty good effort for the time i had.

The final chapter- death, life and Solidworks

When changing my files to the names specified in the brief, I noticed that it the assembly's could not be built when opened as the file path and name had changed. I needed to find the paths manually in order to rebuild the assembly's. Later on in the week Dan pointed out the 'Pack and go' feature which saves the assembly parts and relations as one. 

The torso insert in the Lego man I modeled from was different to the current torso design. As seen below it is only made of four triangular prisms. The Lego head is also different to the modern designs.

I am happy with the way everything turned out for this project. I developed my knowledge in understanding the small details and smaller features Solid Works has to offer. 

And as with all good, yet tedious, things they must come to an end. I'll finish by saying- I like Solid Works.

Lord of the SolidWorks- Return of the Lego

Ironically, after this post I am going to see the Lego movie. It will either a) be the best movie ever or b) be complete tripe and a pillaging of the Lego franchise. Judging by the various lego video games, i'm leaning towards a.

The end of the blasphemous Solid Works assignment is coming to an end...
In week 4 I focused on trying to make the arm out of only lofts/ extrusion between sketches although I had no luck making it look nearly as accurate (see arm picture below) as the one I had already made which was just an extrusion and variable radius fillet. It looks very accurate apart from a slight ripple where the inner elbow is, but it is barely noticeable.


I have finalized all of the parts and made the drawings. Dimensioning was not easy but it also wasn't too hard. There where no parts that I didn't know how to dimension. The only problem may come from people mis-interpreting the physical shape of the Lego man. I resolved this by giving a third angle projection for clarity, as well as a section view.

The SolidWorks saga; Motorboat

Of the past three weeks, week 3 has been the least constructive. Although during the first two weeks I solidly worked on my SolidWorks assignment so I am still on track. Since this is the case I decided to add some extra details to my Lego accessory (The boat). Whats a boat without a motor? A row boat. Whats a boat with a motor? A motor boat. The motor did not take a long time to make as it is only two parts; a propeller and the motor itself. The motor was solid worked into existence by extruding a side profile of a boat motor, cut extruding the front profile, and then rounding the edges at various radii, radii. The propeller was easy; it is just an extruded circle (a cylinder) with a boundary extrude (a boundary extrude uses two sketch profiles to make a solid feature), and lastly filleting the features where necessary. I attached the boat motor to the boat by making a 'H' shaped extrude from a rear face on the boat motor, and then made an extruded cut in the same 'H' shape into the rear face of the boat.

I also found out that my Lego man was an older version with different internal features from the new Lego men. This was OK- I just had to remake the insides of the Lego man chest from my old one to the new one. I noticed that the old one is much simpler and works just as well as the new one which looks overly and pointlessly complicated. 'How much more complication have they jammed in to the Lego man's chest cavity?' I hear you ask. Well, its not twice as complicated but thrice as complicated. So in summary, we as a society should use the word 'thrice' more often. Or maybe it can be a new aged hipster word...

Hipster Bob: "That 2nd year Product Innovation teacher is thrice as cool as any high school teachers I had"

Non-hipster Pete: "Do you mean high-school teachers or school teachers that were high?"

Hipster Bob: "What?"

So far I would say this assignment has been fairly easy and not taken a lot of time considering how long we have had to do it. I compensated for it's easiness by making a more time consuming accessory.

Fin. Hardcore.

Solidworks Wars: Episode 2 - Nothing attacked me

Installment two has arrived! So many magical hours spent Working those Solids... in SolidWorks, so let's get straight to it.

First and most importantly, I shall address the condition of the blog mascot (The honey soy chicken chips). He lays helplessly on the desk, his few remaining chips sprawled out like the withered petals of a dying flower. He looked me in the eyes, and spluttered, "Life shall go on for some, life shall end for the rest, the only certainties of life being death, taxes and an overly excessive amount of air in chip packets" to which I replied, "Pringles have practically no air in them".
***COMMENT BELOW YOUR WEEK 3 MASCOT IDEAS***

Showing more than ever the fragility of life.  

 I continued from last week refining the Lego Boat which I affectionately named 'GGR' (GGR being the keys I randomly smashed when I was prompted to save the file). I made a seat for the boat so that the Lego man has something to sit on during his voyages on the high seas of the bath tub. It clips onto the boat deck and then the Lego man clips into the chair. I will be 3D printing 2 chairs, however up to 4 chairs and Lego men could be put in the boat. I may even add a motor or dashboard to the boat if I get enthused, and Solidworks is quite enthusing to me.


The wine bottle is finished with no problems, now I will move onto the technical drawings.

Fin.

Opening introductory initialisationary post

OK, the blog title may be a lie, except for the CAD part. But it got you excited for a little bit, right?

As much as I would like this blog to be super, or hardcore, or extreme, or relatively non-insane it probably won't be. Yep, this is just a regular and sometimes irregular blog about using SolidWorks.


I decided to choose a mascot for this blog. Yes, the blog mascot is a half eaten bag of honey soy chicken 
chips. I'm actually eating the mascot right now. I don't think this blog will have a mascot for very long...

OK, now that you are confused about my motives with this blog, and what it actually has to do with SolidWorks, I have no idea how to end this sentence. I started replicating the drawings of the wine bottle during the week one computer practical. Apart from not being able to understand some of the intricate details of the reference drawing provided, it seem very straight forward...
I decided that over the long weekend I would make a start on replicating the Lego man into SolidWorks. Well, I ended up doing the whole thing on Sunday. It took about 10 hours to model all of the parts and then assemble them in an assembly, wait... WAIT! I HEAR AN ICE CREAM VAN OUTSIDE!

OK, I'm back. Unfortunately I am confused and without ice cream. I couldn't find the ice cream van. I forgot why I am confused. The Lego man was relatively easy to model, the only part that may not be 100 percent accurate is the arms, but I measured them as best as I could and got them looking as close to the real ones as possible. For the accessory I am making a boat! I chose a boat as it gives children / young men who need to let go of their childhood a chance to take their Lego building experience to the bathtub. I am 3/4 of the way through making the boat.THE ICE CREAM VAN MUSIC IS GETTING LOUDER!?!?!?! I plan on finishing the wine bottle exercise on the week end.

Well, that's the end of the first blog. Thanks for reading.

P.S. I can't tell you if it gets better or worse from here on in.