In this activity, i came up with the idea to make a wine rack, which is really for storing my bottles when my friends come over to my house so i can organize them in one place. After making it, i realized that i can also store 1L beer bottles.

Next, i will briefly describe with images how the four parts that make up this assembly are defined geometrically and dimensionally. To be able to correct the measurements more easily, i added these equations, which are: The size of the MDF, the thickness of the pillars, the length of the base, and the size of the bottles

Designing on solidworks

🌵 Piece number 1 🌵

In this piece, I made a sketch in the shape of a cactus where I added most of the equations to keep them related and then gave it a pad with a thickness of 15 mm.

Now I made a cut to create some grooves at the bottom where these will connect with the base of the structure.

🌵 Piece number 2 🌵

In this piece, I only drew a rectangle that met the width measurement, which should be greater than 200 mm.

Then, I made the slots where piece 1 would fit.

🌵 Piece number 3 🌵

With the third piece, I designed a link to join piece number 1. This link is 30x15x250 mm.

And to prevent movement and them coming out later, I made boxes on both sides for piece number 4 to go into.

Final view :

🌵 Piece number 4 🌵

This are the snap fits i designed for the slots on piece number 3.

How to save the document as DXF

Here i left you these two images, where you only need to CLICK ON SAVE AS > save as type > DXF

Once you clicked on save, the softawre will return you to the part, where you will only need to click on the face which you want to have the dxf file, and it will show you this window.

This is how it looks the final assemble, i added a material to look simmilar as the final version. Assemblying all the parts together i could notice it would fit perfectly as i thought.

VCarve Pro

New file

To be able to cut the pieces on the router and import the documents in DXF format, we will need a software called VCarve Pro. The first thing we need to know to add our DXF documents is to create a new worksheet and define the work area. In our case, we were provided with a 15 mm thick MDF sheet that is 120 cm wide and 240 cm long. Also don't forget to set Origin as i did, look at the following image.

Edit objects

This step is very important, before doing anything, we have to join the vectors, so we will have to select all the objects on our worksheet and click on 'close loops', the tool is the one underlined in pink.

Transform object

In the first image, the one marked with the green arrow, is for moving the desired object , and the one underlined in purple is for rotating it.

Move

Rotate

From this image, the one that is underlined is for making arrangements with rows and columns. Good for evitate copy and paste one by one.

T bones

These are all the DXF files arranged for cutting on the router

Simulation parameters

First we must to set up the tool parameters on "Edit tool", do it as the following image.

To perform a correct simulation, first we will need to select the vectors that will be cut from the inside, as this way we will first make the holes, and the pieces will not move. Remember to select the "Inside/Left" option and then click on calculate.

You can see the preview and it must seen as here.

Now we will select the outer vectors, which will define the contour of our object. It's important to change the option to "Outside/Right" in addition to adding tabs to prevent the pieces from flying out when the tool finishes passing. You can add them in "Edit tabs."

Place them where there won't be future connections with other pieces.

Finally i had to save in these two formats because in our university we have both, so i didn't know in wich one i would work. Make sure to save the two paths.

Files

Download solidworks files

Download DXF files