Week 2: computer-aided design
February 3 - 9
Assignment
- Digitally render your final project concept
This week started with a run through of some 2D and 3D drafting software. For 2D design, I was interested in Inkscape, but I soon found out from trial that I still prefer Adobe Illustrator. It is a program that I've used extensively in the past and am able to work with it very quickly.
Due to my comfort level with Illustrator, I tend to skip the pen and paper sketching process and dive in to vector art. I enjoy the precision that Illustrator brings, along with the ability to adjust lines, shapes, and curves. When designing a project, I take extra care to flesh out possible different components. I then break down these components and sort them by difficulty and figure out what techniques I know to solve certain problems and what I don't know, so I can prepare to learn it. It's unfortunate that Illustrator does not have parametric capabilities, so I look forward to leaving that to a 3D designer, specifically Solidworks.
I was happy to find out that we will be having access to Solidwork licenses, as that is the program I really wish to learn for the future. However, for this week these licenses are not ready yet. So, I decided to do my 3D rendering with 123D Design. It is a free software from Autodesk and is relatively powerful and easy to use. There are some aspects of it that are infuriating, especially when it comes to fine tuning created objects. I find it can be faster to delete it and start over than it is to tweak it. Because of this, pre-planning becomes very important, which luckily I did when I drew out the project in Illustrator.
I ended up watching quite a few Solidworks tutorials in anticipation of using it starting next week.
Files
- Final Project 2D Concept - SVG File
- Final Project 3D Render - 123D Design File
- Final Project 3D Render - STL File