Tag: CAD

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Ideation

This Wednesday, we participated in a workshop from Autodesk representatives on Fusion 360, an integrated CAD software. We were tasked with creating a phone holder. The representative leading the workshop walked us through the steps to design the phone holder. We are going to print them in the MakerLab later this week. I love this course because we are able to design and create things that we (or others) can actually use. You can see the phone holder I designed here.

Autodesk workshop where we designed phone holders in Fusion 360. The image on the screen is the phone holder we designed.

In addition to designing the basic holder, we also had the opportunity to customize it. We could choose a material, paint colors, add decals, etc. This was my first time utilizing any CAD software, and I really enjoyed it. I thought the Fusion interface was very simple and intuitive. However, I have heard that this is not the case with other CAD softwares. I would love to learn different softwares and see how they differ form each other.

After the workshop, we had about 45 minutes to work with our teams to create “How Might We” statements. We used the post-it notes from last class to help us write them. My team narrowed our work down to 3 “How Might We” statements. These statements are an essential part of the Ideation phase of the design process, so we are testing if our idea to create a tread for prosthetic users will work. This activity challenged us to not be too broad nor too specific. We found it difficult to find a balance. I am looking forward to the next few weeks in the Fab Lab to continue our project!

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Fusion 360 Workshop

This week we focused on the CAD software, specifically Autodesk Fusion 360. Prior to class this week we learned quick shortcuts and the basic fundamental of parametric designing. Dan Banach, education program manager at autodesk, gave an immersive presentation of the world of Fusion 360. He has more than 30 years of Fusion 360 knowledge. He was there from the very start. It all started with a 3D model of a five and quarter sized floppy disk. Dan also simply broke down the ideology of the cloud product innovative software Fusion 360, into three main components: use, design, and make. After his intro  we had the task of going through a tutorial of creating a phone charging stand. This helped us get even more familiar with the functions and capabilities of the software.


Dan Banach during the Fusion 360 Workshop

I myself have some knowledge and previous with CAD. However its with solidworks, which is a lot different from Fusion 360. You have similar capabilities, but solidworks is far more complicated. I like how simplified Fusion makes computer aided design. The shortcuts and keys were super easy to pick up on and the drop down menus house every function. Solidworks took me some time to get a stable grip on. Both softwares are great in their own respective ways. Regardless of which a person chooses you’ll still get a understanding of not only parametrics but design thinking. The software gives you a different method of approaching problems and design decisions. The simplest thing from a curve to the material itself of the product all attribute to the overall product.

My final design and render of the phone charging stand

After the Fusion Workshop ended we were given another on “How to Statements”  from our TA Mehmet Aydin. This activity allowed us to further explore the centralized themes within our ideas. After choosing the top three themes, which we wrote out in concise sentences, we created a how to statement. Essentially staging  a question of how were were going to do some of the things we sought out to solve. Like mentioned in last week’s presentation his is a cycle within the design process. We came to conclusions last week, but this exercise allowed us to revisited, rethink, and revitalize some of those ideas. I feel like now we have a pretty concret grip on the opportunity and the market in which we’re trying to infiltrate.