2. Computer Aided Design¶
This week I explored various 2D and 3D design softwares.
Assignment¶
- Model (raster, vector, 2D, 3D, render, animate, simulate, …) a possible final project
- Compress your images and videos
- Post a description with your design files on your class page
2D Design Softwares¶
CorelDraw¶
The first 2D design software I used was CorelDraw. CorelDraw is a vector-based 2D design software. CorelDraw was already downloaded on the computer I was working on, so I did not need to download it. I have also used CorelDraw in the past when designing files to laser cut in previous school engineering classes. Overall, I think CorelDraw is a very good, easy-to-use 2D design software.
I designed a keychain with a butterfly on CorelDraw.
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First, I pasted an image of a butterfly into CorelDraw.
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I traced the image in CorelDraw. I tested out several trace settings until I found the one that worked the best. I ultimately determined that centerline worked the best.
Detailed Logo Setting with High Detail:
Centerline Setting:
This is my final traced image:
- I realized that the logo was still in the corner of the image, so I neede to delete it. The simplest way I thought I could delete it was using Virtual Segment Delete to remove it.
- I needed to ensure the image was 0.5 pt font or any size other than Hairline. Hairline means that the design will get cut all the way through, and I would not want that for the image on a keychain, which I would want to raster.
- I had to add the circle around the design to make the main keychain body, which I did using the circle tool. I had to change the circle dimensions, so the dimensions would be even and not make the shape an oval. This line size needed to be Hairline, so that the material would be cut all the way through.
- The next step was to add the ring for the keychain. This also needed to be Hairline. I started by creating the outside line for the ring:
Then, I had to add the inner circle for the keychain.
Final Keychain Design¶
No color:
Color:
Gimp¶
The second 2D design software I used was Gimp. Gimp is a raster-based 2D design software. I used this link to download Gimp. I followed this tutorial to learn how to remove the background of an image using Gimp.
This is the image I started with:
I used the Fuzzy Select Tool to select the background and then used the delete key to delete the background.
This is the tool I used:
This is the picture after I first tried to delete the background:
This is the picture after the second time I tried to delete the background:
It got better and better each time, so this was the final product:
Overall, I enjoyed using Gimp
3D Design Softwares¶
SculptGL¶
The first 3D design software I experimented with was SculptGL. SculptGL is a software where you can shape a ball of clay using various tools, including paint, twirl, and flatten. These are the various options you can use to manipulate the clay:
While playing around with the various tools, I created a spider:
I really liked this software and thought it was very fun to use and experiment with. My favorite tools ended up being the drag tool and the paint tool. The drag tool allowed the user to pull the clay, and the paint tool allowed the user to color the clay. SculptGL was also very easy to learn and use.
Blender¶
Another 3D design software I explored was Blender. I also really enjoyed Blender, especially the animation features. Mrs. Horstman gave us a crash course on the many capabilities of Blender, which I found very valuable.
Monkey Head¶
First, after opening Blender, I cleared away the items that already existed by selecting them, right-clicking, and pressing delete. Then, I used the keyboard shortcut Shift + A to open the add menu. I selected monkey from the mesh dropdown menu to make a monkey head appear. I then explored the various view modes, including x-ray mode:
In order to edit the faces, vertices, and lines of the money, I had to switch out of object mode in the top-left corner and move to edit mode:
In Blender, there are different modes to select either the vertices, lines, or faces, which is unique compared to other 3D design softwares.
After Using Vertex Mode:
After Using Line and Face Modes (and Vertex Mode):
Blender also has the option to extrude faces similar to Fusion360’s Extrude tool:
To extrude, after selecting the face, all you have to do is drag the arrows. This was my finished monkey head after playing around with several of Blender’s tools:
Cube Covered by Cloth¶
I cleared the screen again to start over and explore with more tools. This time, I started with the cube from the Mesh dropdown menu:
I started out by deleting one of the cube’s faces by using the select face tool in Edit Mode and then right clicking to delete:
To add the face back, I had to use the vertex select tool to select all four vertices around the missing face and then selected F on the keyboard to create the face:
We were instructed to add a plane, but I learned that if you add a plane while in Edit Mode for the cube, it will automatically be added into the cube, so if you want the plane to be above the cube, you must go into Object Mode.
I had to scale the plane to be at least two times the size of the cube so that it would be able to cover the cube fully and drape over it. It also had to be slightly above the cube.
In the object list in the corner, you could see the list of all the existing objects, which, at the time, was the cube and the plane.
Because the end goal was to animate the plane into a cloth that could drape over the cube, I had to change the settings of the cube in Object Mode so that Collision was selected, and I just kept the default Collision settings.
Before changing the plane into a cloth material, I had to enter Edit Mode and subdivide the plane by right-clicking and selecting subdivide. Subdividing the plane allows it to not fall straight through the collision object without bending at all. When subdividing, it is very important that you do not subdivide more than twenty times because if you exceed, twenty, it can lead to your computer crashing. Also, if a plane is already subdivided twenty times and you subdivide it twenty more times, it will subdivide exponentially, meaning that the twenty sections will split twenty more times.
After subdividing the plane, I returned to Object Mode and changed the settings of the plane (under the galaxy shaped symbol on the right), setting the material to silk I believe. It was very important to select Object Collisions and Self Collisions under the Collisions menu.
This is a picture and videos of the final animated cloth:
Text to AI¶
Next, I experimented with some AI 3D design softwares. The first one was Text-to-AI. Text-to-AI was very good at following dimensions and technical terms, but it was not good at following specific details and could not follow directions that were not precise. I ultimately was not very impressed by this software. First, I designed a lego using specific directions:
The lego was very accurate, and the software did a good job of following my dimensions.
Next, I tried to make a flathead screwdriver, which was also pretty accurate.
I wanted to see how detailed I could make the design while still allowing the AI to generate a design, so I tried to make a Connect 4 board. It failed and only made one hole in the board but was not too messed up. The setup was pretty accurate, but there were some flaws.
I tried to make a top hat, but it created it on its side, instead of having the top of the hat facing up.
The last thing I tried to make was a unicorn, which I did not think would work, but I wanted to see what it would come up with.
It just created a series of shapes but did not look like a unicorn at all. This was definitely my least successful attempt with this software.
PrintMon Makerworld AI¶
Another 3D AI design software I used was PrintMon Makerworld. This software had the option to generate from text or from image. I tried both options out.
This is my attempt using Generate from Text with the prompt, “Purple unicorn with elephant trunk and peacock feathers”:
This is my attempt using Generate from Image with the image, 
:
Fusion 360: Designing Final Project¶
I chose to design my final project in Fusion 360 because I have some prior experience from previous engineering classes and from watching and doing around most of Kevin Kennedy’s Learn Fusion 360 in 30 Days YouTube tutorials. They were very helpful, and I was very grateful to have done them.
First, I needed to design the inner part of my project that houses the LEDs, touch, sensors, and the main area where the user writes. I started by making the outisde of this inner housing. I made a sketch on the bottom plane in the shape of a square, extruded it, made a sketch on top of it, and then extruded a hole into to make it hollow. Using parameters was very, very important, and I used parameters in most, if not all, of my dimensions. Parameters allow dimensions to be stored in essentially variables, so if you change the value, it changes the value in all the places that variable is used. For example, I used the parameter board_height to set the height of the board. Later, when I finished the project, I was able to go back and change the height of the board easily by changing the value of the parameter in just one place.
This is the initial sketch for the inner part of my project:
This is the sketch for adding the rim before extruding the box, making it hollow:
This is the outer part of my project with the start of the area that holds the screen: 
This is the sketch for the outer part: 
This is the sketch of the screen: 
For each part of the project, I made sure to make a new component. Making new components was helpful when changing the appearance and keeping the design organized.
This is the finished outer part of my project with the appearance changed. 
Next, I had to create the holder for my LED matrix. I made another new component to do this, but it was nested under the inner housing component. When adjusting the height of the LED holder, I learned that you need to select move bodies or it will just pull the face up. I struggled for a little bit trying to figure out why it kept stretching my LED holder up instead of moving the whole thing.
I then asked ChatGPT what size LED it would recommend, and it said 5 mm, so my next goal was to create a matrix of 5 mm circles evenly spaced out on the LED holder. This task turned out to be a lot harder than I initially expected because I could not figure out how to evenly space the circles throughout the square. The first thing I tried was creating a circle in the top right corner of the square and then using a rectangular pattern to spread them out the distance of the square. I also had to figure out how to change the direction of the patetrn so that the circles appeared in the square. I had to select the top edge and the left edge of the square I believe to make this happen.
I quickly figured out how to make the circles evenly spaced away from each other, but the issue was making them evenly spaced away from the edges of the square.
I asked ChatGPT how it recommended I go about spacing the circles in a 6 x 6 pattern evenly, and it recommended that I start with a circle in the center of the square and use the symmetry rectangular pattern tool. This idea made sense to me, so I tried to do it this way.
While I was in the process of doing this, I must have hit some random keyboard shortcut because my entire design turned white and looked very unusual.
I was very confused and tried to undo, but it was not working, so I consulted with ChatGPT. I eventually discovered that the error was that I had switched the display settings to wireframe. All I had to do once diagnosing the problem was change the Visual Style setting back to Shaded.
Once I got the display back to normal coloring, I continued trying to use symmetry to create the circle matrix, but the issue was one side was different from the other side, and it was not symmetric. The issue was that Symmetry for Rectangular Pattern does not work for even numbers. I was trying to make a 6x6 matrix, which was not possible to be made symmetric if you start with a circle in the center. I discovered this through testing different numbers, and 7x7 and 5x5 ended up being spaced evenly exactly how I wanted my 6x6 matrix to look. I eventually got my pattern to work using construction lines and equal constraints, which I had learned about in one of Kevin Kennedy’s videos.
After my 6x6 matrix was finished, I had to extrude the circles. As I was about to do this, I realized that my matrix of circles was actually just a matrix of points, and I had accidentally made a rectangular pattern of the centers of the circles instead of the circles themselves. Luckily, the process was much easier the second time. After my successful matrix of 5 mm circles (5 mm was also set as a parameter in case I decide to change it later) was finished, I was finally able to extrude the circles to make holes for the LEDs. This was the dimension I used for the spacing between each circle: ( Inner_Board_Width - InnerRim * 2 ) / 6.
Next, I realized I needed some sort of groove so that the LED holder would be able to fit in the box and not be all the way at the bottom. I made a sketch on one of the inner walls of the box and made a rectangle, extruded it, and then mirrored that to the other three sides. This is the groove on one side of the box before I mirrored it:
I had to create midplanes to mirror the groove. Creating a midplane is an option from the Construct menu and I had to create two midplanes, so they intersected perpendicularly. I also had to create one diagonal plane that split the box in half diagonally. To do this, I used the Plane Through Two Edges tool under the Construct menu.
I also wanted to change the LED holder height to be adjustable using a parameter, so I used the Move tool and Translate to set the height:
This is the LED holder adjusted into the LED holder groove:
I then created an Offset Plane off the top of the LED holder and set the distance away to be half the parameter I made for the height of the LED because I may change the LED size later, and I wanted it to be easily adjustable. I made it hald so I could mirror over that plane.
I looked back and realized that my sketch for the groove was not fully constrained, so I hadf to go back and fix it.
Next, I had to design the holder for my touch sensors. I copied the LED component I had and used Paste New under my Housing component to duplicate the LED holder for my Touch Sensor Holder. I wanted to keep the LED holes in my Touch sensor holder, so the LEDs light does not get blocked, but I needed to add another hole next to each LED hole for the wiring of the touch sensors. I repeated the Rectangular Pattern steps, Construction Lines, and Equal Constraints that I had to do for the LED holes and quickly added another set of holes for the wiring.
The last thing I needed to do was add the semi-transparent top to my project design. I initiall tried to create a new component to do this, but I could not get the constraints to be completed in the new sketch, so I made the top in the Housing component instead. I got the sketch to work first try and then extruded my rectangle by -1 mm and changed the appearance to a mostly clear light blue glass.
Final Design Pictures¶
Timeline Video¶
Final without LED holder, touch sensor holder, or top:
Final with only LED holder:
Final:
All Parameters Used:
Video Compression¶
I discussed my image compression techniques on my Week 1 Page. I tried to use this website for my video compression for Week 2, but it took me around seven or eight tries to get my videos to be small enough, and the quality decreased immensely. I ended up using this website because it immediately decreased the file size and the quality was nice and clear. Kathryn really helped me with the format of my code to show the video.
I also used this website to compress my pdfs.
| Software | Pros | Cons (if any) |
| CorelDraw | - Easy to learn and can be used for raster and vector (mostly vector) | |
| Gimp | - Good for raster designs | |
| SculptGL | - Very self-explanatory, easy to learn, and good for shaping virtual clay | - Only good at modifying existing shape (not really able to start from scratch) |
| Blender | - Able to modify vertices, faces, and lines of an object individually and good animation features | - Harder to master |
| Text to AI | - Good at making basic shapes (lego, cube, etc.) and able to following technical details (dimensions, broad shapes, etc.) | - Cannot handle specific details and must be very precise with language |
| Makerworld PrintMon | - Good at making creatures, can take instructions from text or generate based off an image, can get pretty specific with text instructions, and can generate cartoon characters based off pictures pretty well | - Only makes creatures, image generator does not work very well with real people, and must use MakerWorld coins to 3D print designs |
| Fusion 360 | - Good for parametric design |
Useful Links¶
AI Help¶
Here are all my ChatGPT searches: PDF1 and PDF2
Files¶
Here are most of the files I created in Week 2: Folder