Computer Aided Design
For this week assignment we had to initially test several drawing programs for making and initial drawing of our final project. I do not really know many programs for doing this kind of work beyond the ones I use to design parts (such as solidworks, autocad or onshape).
At the end I tried 3 programs:
Paint
Typical core program for dummies who don't know about the subject. I'm not very good at it, but it allows a quick design that gives the basis for the proposed idea. It is a program that generates images with bitmaps. My first desing is quite simple. The colors indicate the parts of the tentative final design, the same that is repeated throughout the subject. The first part are the sensors that will give position and orientation of the fingers. The second part is the controller which is the brain of the system and all is connected with wires.
Inkscape>
This program is nice for drawing. It creates vector images and have several tools that someone with expertise could know how to use. In my case I tried the more simple. For my drawing I started making the fingers, where sensors are located. The sweet part is that the corners from the rectangles can be rounded.
Also, the colour can be change by varying the RGBA parameters.
Then, the palm, where the controller is going to be located, is added to the figure, changing its color to green.
The wires are drawn using 2 tools: Pencil: line is as straight as your pulse... please, don't judge me. The program offers the possibility to increase the width of the line and add markers to the ends of the lines.
Bezier Line: these lines are special because soft curves can be added. However, it required a lot of practices to get the trick of doing them weel. I used this tool for making the rest of the lines and try different options to personalize them.
Onshape
My favorite program that makes vector images through parametric design. The downside is that it is not the best program for curves. I started with the sensors (cylindrical bodies).
Because each finger is independant from the other one, they have diferent colours.
Finally, the controller is added and a rectangle. It is important to menion that this program is useful because help to see the entire system in 3D, which helps to see if by any chances the parts collide between them (it is not apply to this case).
It made me difficult to make curves for hands, but gave advantage to design fingers as if they were hollow cylinders. The theme of three-dimensionality. To see the file please connect the next link.
Download all the files from here.