Computer Aided Design
Ok... Truth be told, I fell behind with my homework this week - but for good reason - I was attending the SolidWorks World Conference where, among other things, I tested our next generation software with customers and presented our existing software to the SolidWorks community in attendance. ...In case you didn't read my bio, I work for SolidWorks. :)
Instead of just posting one of the many things I've designed over the years to demonstrate my CAD-chops, I wanted to at least design something useful from scratch.
Taking advantage of my tardiness, I designed a housing for the custom ISP board I made for next week's assignment.
The main piece is a simple plastic housing to hold the PCB. I modeled it around the already designed board, leaving clearance for it to slide into the recess. I gave it a bit of flair with a simple rib pattern along the bottom and then cut holes and hex-shaped pockets to receive the screws and nuts, respectively. I plan on 3D printing this piece.
I then modeled a cover piece by either converting or offsetting the edges of the housing. This allowed me to get a perfect fit and ensure that the cover will always update when I make changes to the housing. I plan on laser cutting clear acrylic for this piece.
I built an assembly of all the pieces and added hardware to hold everything together. Here it is side-by-side in assembeled and exploded views.
I added materials to the model and then rendered it using PhotoView 360.
I also experimented with a few 2D tools this week. First I downloaded and installed INKSCAPE , a free vector-based drawing tool. I watched Neil's video that showed how to clone shapes and use them to remove regions from other shapes. This techinque appears to work well and I and see how it might be used to suedo-parametrically edit things (or maybe better put, power-edit things).
I made this simple shape that could be sent to any of the machines in the lab using MODS. I think, though that I'd only ever use an app like this to create things like vinyl stickers or other things that don't require high dimensional precision.
I also tried DraftSight a free 2D drafting tool. I watched a few tutorial videos and then drew these three standard views of a Pillow Block. What I liked about this tool is that I could impart precise dimensions - that way I knew exactly what I would eventually be sending to a machine to fabricate. The tool, however is not parametric, so editing things was still a bit manual.
