Plant Pot - Parametric Laser Construction Kit

I decided it was time to make a little plant and pot construction kit, as I couldn't think of anything else, and I rather like plants.

Drawing

I started by drawing some little sketches:

Card

and then testing a cardboard model:

Solidworks

I then moved to solidworks, working with the same variables for equations as before:

I created a sub assembly of the pot base

I made the slots on one of the pot sides, the duplicated the part with a new name, mirrored the major slots to ensure that they'd be identical.

Having made the two pot side parts, I needed to create the interlocking pieces for stability and a place for the plant branch to attach. To measure the slot seperation distance, I used the measure tool, with the three parts side by side:

Going from a 'master' support strut like the pot sides, I duplicated the part and mirrored, and edited the slots as required (drawing from the card model for slot numbers and orientations).

I extensively used the Extend, and Trim entities tools.

• Mirror without Copy

• Mirrored by move

• Extend entity

• Extending entities

• Trimming entities

I then made some other parts using splines and arcs with fairly random values.

Assembly

Which I then encorporated into an assembly with the pot sub assebmly below:

As a photographer I really like the fine camera controls within Solidworks to do with the lens and focal depth. It tends to lead to an over production of renders - most of which like my photographs should be kept hidden deep in folders rarely traversed.

Photographs

• less good photographs

Parts