Hello, my name is David Pello and I'm from Asturias, North Spain.

I work at LABoral arts and industrial creation centre as the manager of the production centre and labs, and will be the one in charge of the Asturias FabLAB (opening soon).

My idea for my final project is the design, construction and programming of an open source platform for high altitude balloon tracking, including structure (support, thermal isolation, etc), and electronics (MCU, radio transmission, gps, sensors, etc).

Classes > Computer Design

The purpose of this class is to learn how to design, model, animate, simulate, etc, using computer aided design software.

For my final project, I'm going to use several tools, first, I want to use free/open-source tools if possible (I think it is), and second, I'm used to some ways of work more than others.

My plan is to use:

  • LibreCAD: 2D CAD Design.
  • OpenSCAD: 3D CAD interactive/parametric modeling.

    So I first designed the outline of one of the structure's sides using LibreCAD. The walls will be 1mm aluminium, as their 3D form will be a simple extrusion, designing this is in 2D is perfect for this purpose, and also for fabrication using a CNC mill.

    dxf drawing

    Then I moved to OpenSCAD to put the walls together and add some structure support. With OpenSCAD is very easy to make design blocks using modules, so I first extruded a wall, then put the walls together, then created a structure support, and so on.

    OpenSCAD screenshot

    The current DXF and OpenSCAD files here:

  • Structure DXF
  • OpenSCAD file

    Then I tried to make a small animation using Blender. I just imported the OpenSCAD-generated STL into Blender, added some materials, lights, and made a simple animation moving the camera around.

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