Principles Practices project management
interface and application programming
mechanical design, machine design
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Gropius from Il Leccio - Wooden toys on Vimeo.
In this exercise I wanted to test some CAD softwares and programming. The softwares chosen were FreeCAD, Openscad, Wings3D and Rhino/Grasshopper. As a model to design, I chose a geometric construction block for children inspired by the buildings of Walter Gropius, architect and Bauhaus founder.
FreeCAD is open source (LGPL license) was started around 2002 by two German engineers, Jürgen Riegel and Werner Mayer. I wanted to experiment it guided by web tutorials. The Software is not easy but very interesting, because is possible to program it in Python. The version 0.12 was instable in my Windows 7 Home Basic and I needed to restart it sometimes. In practice, we need some patience because the tutorial have few images of the programming results, so, non programmers will have some difficulties. An interest beginner book is FreeCAD [How-to] Solid Modeling with the power of Python Brad Collette Daniel Falck.
My results:
The Gropius´ code:
import Part
from FreeCAD import Vector
a = Part.makeBox(10,20,40,Vector(1,0,0))
b = Part.makeBox(10,10,10,Vector(11,0,0))
c = Part.makeBox(10,40,20,Vector(21,0,0))
d = a.fuse(b)
e = d.fuse(c)
Part.show(e)
2. OpenSCAD
OpenSCAD is a free software has been written by Clifford Wolf and Marius Kintel. Very simple and fast , I draw the Gropius´s block using these basics tutorials:
My results:
The Gropius´ code:
union(){
cube ([1,2,4]);
translate([1,0,0]) {
cube ([1,1,1]);
}
translate([2,0,0]) {
cube ([1,4,2]);
}
}
3. Wings3D
Wings 3D is an open source modeler currently maintained by Dan Gudmundsson and Richard Jones. There is several tutorials and my difficult was the Wings3D precision and the units.
So my results are here:
4. Rhinoceros/Grasshopper
Rhinoceros is a commercial versatile 3-D modeler by Robert McNeel & Associates. Grasshopper is a graphical algorithm editor integrated with Rhino’s 3-D modeling tools. The Grasshopper´s goal is the visual act of scripting and the results seen in real time in the canvas.
So my results are here:
Parameterized Groupius´ block in Rhino canvas
