Assignment

For this week, the assignment was to model (draw, render, animate, simulate) a possible final project, and post it on our class page.

2D Design

In the archives section of the fab academy 2016 site, I found a surprising no: softwares for designing and modelling. I knew very few of the programs described and, after reviewing them, I decided that i will use photoshop to create the 2D model and SolidWorks to create the 3D model of my project. I only have a very slight knowledge of both softwares but i suppose its better than none.

Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe Systems. Photoshop proved to be fairly easy to learn. I had need of only a few basic tools for creating my 2D model so it was pretty easy. Adobe photoshop is not open source, but the Fab academy nodes can use all adobe softwares freely for upto 1 year.Tge free registration can be done using the regional fablab node id.

3D Design

I have made use of Solidworks for making my 3D design of the light system. I have only a little experience with the software and hence the model is not totally perfect. I designed the initial shapes in the right plane.I added each of the shapes(Lines,rectangles etc) in the same plane at first. This proved to be a problem when i tried to make adjustments to the 3D model because all the shapes were in the same plane. This made it very hard to make changes to the already made model.




Hence i had to redraw each shape in a new plane each and made the 3D models seperately.



The inter connecting lines were trimmed off as well as the measurements and the 3D model was rendered.





However there is a slight problem in my design. The slope that should be present between the LED Light panel(Green) and the Reflectors(White) is not present. This is because i havent been able to figure out how to use Lofted cut operation between two planes. I will be correcting the mistake in the coming days. There are lso a few things missing from the design such as LED ights in the panel, switches and power source. This will also be added in the future once i learn more about the workings if Solidworks.

Files

Update

During the mid-fab time,i decided on the project topic as automated fish feeding.I had created the design using 3ds max software.The design was still in the 1st phase and whole system was not thought out yet.
Here's a pic of the design-



Download design file-fish feeder

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