Cardboard Design Check

For this part of the sheet metal vessel project, I was reminded how much patience is required for cutting and scoring cardboard, and how little patience I actually have. The cuts for the bottom of the crown were probably the most difficult (besides the tabs), because neither inner nor outer cut techniques were a good solution. I think that will make it difficult when transitioning to metal.

My cardboard model, complete with screws, made me rethink my design a little bit as far as the tabs. I'm going to try to use two smaller tabs with one screw each, or a longer tab with three screws. Stay tuned for Metal Crown v2.0....

Tabs and Stuff

Adding the tab(s) was relatively more difficult in practice than during the demo, but that might be because of all the weird faces of my model that got in the way. It didn't make my life easy, to say the least. So far, I've only added one tab/fastener set. I kind of like the idea of having it fasten in one place. For now... I think it would be awkward to have all of the faces use tabs. It might need to be made of several pieces if I chose that route. All things I have to consider yet!

 The unfolded view - this will be pretty easy to assemble once made in metal.

I also found a view called "realistic" when browsing through that menu, which made it look even cooler.

Sheet Metal CAD Model

I have successfully made a metal crown!...Digitally, of course. But it's getting there! During my first attempt converting it to sheet metal, I may have skipped a crucial step in forgetting to create the corner seams. Instead, I created the bends and then tried to unfold my model, which, as you would expect, failed miserably. I referred back to Bryan's tutorial once he'd put it online, and realized that I'd missed this step (which tends to happen when you have the attention span of a squirrel drinking esperesso).

Anyway, I fixed it and was successful in unfolding my crown! It will be a crown for now...I may add a bottom so it's an "actual" vessel at some point.

It really looks like a crown! *sniffs back tears of joy*

The unfolded view. I have yet to add other features to this version of the model, but will update with more.

Sheet Metal Vessel: Surface Model

This part of the sheet metal vessel project may have been my most successful venture into Inventor to date! I have been successful, slayed the basilisk, ventured into Mordor, and what have you. Three-point planes were my best friend throughout the creation of my surface model. (Thanks for liking geometry so much, past Amanda!)

My process was very simple. I took the measurements I believed were necessary to create the surface model, and then I started sketching. One interesting thing to note was that I sketched the "top," or rather, the plane at the top of the object, first, and then created an offset plane for the bottom. The rest of the 12 planes were created using three-point planes, during which time I learned the convenience of projecting the geometry from other sketches onto the current sketch.

Assemble all the Things!

I could also have titled this, "In Which I am Slightly Less Terrible at Assembling Objects than Drawing Parts in Autodesk," but it would sound like I was writing songs for Fall Out Boy.

I think the sketching of new parts within an assembly is something I still have to get used to, but the more I practice, the more it clicks (pretty slowly, though). I experimented with making hubcaps. I really want to try to create a side mirror for the car doors as well.

Sheet Metal Vessel: Refined Prototype

I went ahead with what everyone called the crown, and I'm pretty happy with the prototype, although it's not much different than the original since I was pretty careful the first time I made it.

In Which I am Even Worse at Drawing than AutoDesk Inventor

Our group came up with some simple sketches for our virtual vehicle concept. This is the result (excuse my commentary - I was probably over caffeinated at the time).

In Which I Am Terrible at Blogging

Of course I would get an assignment done and forget to do the most important part. Whoops..On a positive note, I enjoyed creating paper samples for the first part of the vessel assignment. As you can see below, they started off extremely simple (seeing that I can't just pull creativity out of a hat, as it seems a lot of other people can - I am always the first to degrade my artistic abilities). However, as I progressed and worked with the paper, I stuck to what I know: math. It doesn't sound exciting at all, but I do really enjoy the art that simple geometry can produce. Whoever said math is a hard science wasn't entirely correct!

My initial attempts grew and evolved as I practiced and played around.

My final paper prototype was the one I'm most proud of (yay math!) and was dubbed a "crown" in class. Now that they mentioned it, it kind of does look like one. It kind of reminds me of the crown Max wears in Where the Wild Things Are. I like it.