Goal

The goal of this assignment is to explore and play with all the tools that were given to us in the lecture class and then represent, model, draw, whatever... our final project with as many tools as we can. The goal is not to master all of those tools, but to try all of them so that you have a wide spectrum of alternatives and can make a better decision when you have to face a design problem.

Last Week MIT lecture review

From now on, I will also review the lecture class and my impression of it. Today we had a little crazy hour and a half of worldwide self-presentations, it was very funny to meet you all guys and girls across the globe. Later in the lecture, Neil showed us a lot of tools for modelling and presenting projects, from the simplest hand drawing/scanning to the most sophisticated Pro/Engineer/Catia stuff. I knew most of the tools he presented. To be honest I didn't expect to learn anything new today. But later he started talking about some tools they were developing at MIT. He said they were very powerful but in early stage of development. At that moment my ears were at full vertical position. He demoed the Fab Modules (so they call them) and they looked like the most amazing tools I've never seen. Later I downloaded the kokopelli tool (the GUI of the Fab Modules for Mac) and started playing a bit with it. I managed to draw a circle in just 15 minutes. But far from frustrated, I was happy. I will spend a lot of time this week with this tool. I have the impression that it will help me a lot in the future. And I always follow my impressions.

Suddenly I looked up and noticed that Jean Pierre and I were the only people left in the Lab. Everybody was out because tonight the world will stop spinning for 90 minutes: Real Madrid - FC Barcelona on TV at 9:00 pm CET. Finally I also left and Jean Pierre was the only Fab Academy student in the Iaac. I guess he doesn't like football very much.

2D Design

Raster

No matter what project or task, I always start by drawing by hand in a piece of paper with a pencil. I am a digital geek and have tried to replace this by all kind of electronic devices. I think I have most of the notes and drawing apps of the app store. But I don't like them, I feel slow, the canvas is very limited, very small. I need freedom. You can check in my last week assignment 2 the sketch I made of the video arm, and in the final project page a scanned document of my design decisions.

Other digital raster tools I use is Gimp. Some time ago I deleted Photoshop and installed Gimp. You know, I had been downloading illegal copies of Photoshop when I was a student because I had always thought that free software was bad designed, and unfinished. This is all false. Free software can be even more powerful than paid software. Gimp is one example of it.

Vector

Inkscape is another example of free software that (for me at least) is better than illustrator. Better and easier to use. I didn't follow any course and I can use a basic set of tools straight away. I recommend this. I did not have time to try the rest of the list but I will in the following days.

3D Design

Fab Modules

I will talk more about this section because it is worth it. If you like parametrical design and want to try a very powerful tool, this one is for you. Really. This is like a spreadsheet for CAD. Once you try it you'll wonder how did you designed in other non parametrical software.

I spent most of the weekend trying to install it (I am making a tutorial for those of you interested, I will put here a link when it's done) and playing with it. I made the pulleys of my transmission system and also a part of my arm. I also spent some time because I could not draw a triangle in kokopelli. I looks like if I put the points counter-clockwise the triangle does not render. It only took me 8 hours to figure it out.

Sketchup

This a very intuitive piece of software. I use it for conceptual design. The tools it has are not very poweful, but I have modeled some complex houses with it. The reason why I use it instead of other software is because is fast. I can communicate ideas very fast, shadows works very well. They try to make it a powerful software with the addition of plugins. But I would not bother with them. I would use it for what it was designed, to be an initial design tool.

123D Design

Correct me if I am wrong, but it looks to me that 123D Design is a very decaffeinated version of Inventor Fusion. I tried it both in the computer and the iPad, and I could do nothing with it but put a sphere in the center and scaling it. Inventor Fusion is much more powerful and intuitive. I do not see it very useful given the other tools I tried.

OpenSCAD

Evan Jones introduced it to me. At the beginning it looks just like Kokopelli. It has the same layout. I don't know if it is because I started with it but I feel more comfortable with kokopelli. Because OpenSCAD uses a weird programming language you will have also to learn. Evan Jones uses SolidPython to write the code in Python and translate it to OpenSCAD code. I will try this as well.

Rhino and Grasshopper

Rhino is the best 3D software I have tried. I am even going to buy a license. It is very, very powerful. And it has some plugins that make it even more powerful. There is nothing that is even close to this. Is like a 3D CAD. Kokopelli and fabserver might be more powerful. But you need to code a lot. For the rest of the people, Rhino and grasshopper are much much more intuitive, and easy to use. The only problem I see is that the render is not very powerful. You can use a plugin like VRAY for realistic rendering though.

Inventor Fusion

Inventor is 123D on steroids. I have used it and I will model my arm in this as well as Rhino, because this is a more technical tool, you can put hinges and move the parts like in reality. It was designed for mechanical stuff. And my final project is a mechanical stuff.

3D Studio

15 years ago I was a freelance using 3D Studio rendering buildings views. When I switched to mac I stopped using it. I think they lost the train. I mean, you cannot ignore mac users forever. I have replaced completely 3D Studio with Cinema 4D and Rhino. But if you are in a windows machine it is OK.

Cinema 4D

This is the tool I use in my mac for realistic renderings. It has a very big problem. A huge one. It does not have any precision tool. Snapping is really bad and it does not work as expected most of the time. On the other hand it has a very good rendering engine. If I have time (I don't think so because I only have 25 minutes left to push) I will publish a render of it.

Audio and Video

I have tried the tools but I have my needs covered with other apps. For me, the the video converters are the most useful in the list. Because they can convert between any format and have a lot of plugins like for example, extracting TED talks subtitles from their videos. You can't do this with any other software. I also use:

Final Cut Pro X

This what I currently use for editing video. It is a very powerful and professional software (not expensive at all for what it does). It is not straight away to use but it is easy to learn.

Piezo

This is a little jewel I found one day surfing the web. With this piece of software you can capture audio that you are listening in your computer. It does it perfect and easy (1 button) and does nothing else. That is why I love it.

VLC

VLC is a good multiplatform player. It virtually reproduces every format you can imagine. No need to mess with codecs, and these stuff.

iPad Tools

Given the fact that the iPad or tablet is a common device nowadays, I don't understand why there isn't a dedicated section for its software in the class. Most of us do not bring our computers everywhere. In my holidays I only bring the iPad. I chose the iPad over the rest of the tablets because there is an app for every need you can imagine. But this might change in the future, so I always keep an eye in the other tablets. These are the apps related to this week assignment that I commonly use:

Paper

This is the most similar to drawing in a paper you can have in the iPad, really. No layers, no zoom, no pan. Just the paper and just a few but very realistic tools. When I don't have real paper I use it. Highly recommended.

Trace

I wish I was an architect, I love what they do, but I am an engineer. They draw sketches and they have a lot of creativity, and I am like a robot, always with numbers. Trace is a very limited app that allows you to make a sketch over a photo with just red and black color in a yellow background. When you show it to your friends the will think you are an architect.

Autodesk Tools

Autodesk has released a lot of free tools for the iPad. I will only comment a few of them. There are more, but they are more related with 3D scanning and other topics that will be covered later in the Academy.

• AutoCAD WS: To review and annotate CAD files on the go. It is a little bit annoying because you need an account (free but annoying) to upload and download files.
• 123D Design: I feel it a little difficult to use. I could not make more than a few basic predefined shapes.
• ForceEffect: Analyse static structures on the go. Free and easily!
• ForceEffect Motion: Analyse dynamic structures on the go. Free and easily as well!

Hardware

I have also added a hardware section this week because I would like to share with you two input devices that I think they are very useful when designing with a computer.

3D Connexion Space Navigator

This is a 3D mouse that you can use to move, pan, rotate and tilt an object or the whole scene. If you are going to design in 3D this is a must, just buy one straight away. It will pay for itself the same day you use it because your clicks will be reduced by 90%. It is compatible with almost all 3D software.

Pressure sensitive tablet

There are lot of brands, sizes, wired, wireless... I just recommend you three things. One, if you can, go for the wired one. Wireless means batteries, configuration and interferences. For me it has no sense to have a wireless device that has to be placed next to the computer. Two, choose one that you can carry with your laptop. This means size and weight. If you choose a very big one, you will place it in your desktop and you will use it only at home. The ideal is to carry it everywhere you go, library, friends house... And three, remember that it will last more that your computer. These peripherals don't go obsolete. So buy one that is reliable and that you think its maker will continue developing drivers in the future. FYI I have a Wacom Intuos 3. It has a good relation between portability and size, it is wired, has 1024 levels of pressure, it has drivers for all OS and versions and it has buried 3 computers so far.

What I learned

You never know when you are going to make a discovery. This week I made mine, the Fab Modules. A piece of software written from fabbers for fabbers. I recognise it is not trivial, it will take you a lot of time, you will talk rubbish when it goes wrong. But when you are typing your last line of code and you close those brackets for the 32nd time, and you see your part on screen... there is no money that can buy this moment. And later its just like mercurial and HTML, with a little practice (I mean several days) you won't see the code, just the figures you draw.

Download files

You can download all the files related to this week here.