2. Computer-Aided Design

This week I worked on defining my final project idea and started to getting used to the documentation process.

Goals

  • [x] model (raster, vector, 2D, 3D, render, animate, simulate, …) a possible final project,
  • [x] compress your images and videos,
  • [x] and post a description with your design files on your class page

Tools Used

TLDR; Nice images

1.Raster and Vector

Pureref

For this section my primary goal was to build up a database of reference images for my final project ideas. To do this I used one of my favorite tools, Pureref

Pureref is a pay what you can software that is used to gather images into a really nice moodboard and keep all the images at a high resolution

It pairs really well with apples ecosystem as you can copy and past across devices straight into the board.

The main tools I use are the ability to copy and paste images using cmd-c and cmd-v

Also selecting images using the box selection tool lets you use the images - arrange - optimal tool (or cmd-p) which sorts images for easy review.

I gathered images from all over but some of my favorite places to look are LeManoosh and just regular old Google Image Search

At this point I have two main ideas;

  • A 3D spacemouse for CAD Software using premium materials
  • A cast that ingratiates sensors that tells the user if they are in danger of further damaging there mending bones

  • Concepts

To develop these ideas my preferred sketching Concepts for IPad

As I prefer the ability to keep having one idea build of the next I prefer the ability to have an infinite canvas over other ability to do very detailed illustrative work in other apps like Procreate

The features I like for quick sketching are the ability to auto sort layers based on what tools you are using, so lines, fills and markers are easily sorted correctly.

As I start to get more specific I bring in images that I have copied from PureRef and also use the snap option to make my lines perfectly straight

These ideas will be explored further in the below sections as start to print them into 3D

2. 3D Mesh Modeling

Blender

In my professional workflow blender is my primary rendering software but I rarely use it for modeling.

As we are very early in the design process and my ideas are quite loose I thought it was a good place to start as it can be very fast for simple shapes and with plugins like BlenderKit I can incorporate some preexisting models into my design to speed things along.

The idea I am modeling is a basic rectangle based on the golden ratio using the website below

I took these measurements to start to build out a scale for my model

The most default of cubes Use the n key to bring up the transform menu on the side of the view port and adjust the Dimensions to achieve the size you need with the model selected cmd-a and reset all transforms One of the most powerful features of blenders is the modifiers tab. These allow you to apply parametric edits to your models without destroying the underlying geometry. In this case I use a bevel modifier to round the corners of my slab I Copy and paste the slab and position the new one above the old one I resize the slab to my liking, reset the scale again and adjust the bevel modifier to suit The snapping features are very helpful for positioning your model I want to show a illustrative electronic board for my model, this will not be modeling in a way that is accurate at this stage but more to show design intent. I want to have exposed boards on a simple geometric shape.

For this I used BlenderKit](https://www.blenderkit.com/) to drag and drop in models and textures into my model. In this case used the following.

The models are put into position A very helpful tip is when using grab g rotate r and scale s you can lock the axis you are working on by pressing x For the standoffs I import a cylinder using shift-a set the number of sides to 6. I then use the scale and grab tool to position the part I now bring in another cylinder use it to create the knob And go into edit mode to create the bevel on the knob. I then fill in the top with the gridfill tool I then use the material tab to start to give the different parts of the model a surface finish, I use a mix of textures from BlenderKit and using the built in Principled BSDF Shader I set up a scene with a background and 3 lights surrounding parts. For the camera I set the focal length to something long as I feel like this works better for product photography I render out a 3 angles, use depth of filed in order to achieve a realistic effect. I find for lower powered machines using blenders denoise feature is very helpful. I set the max samples to 100, and render out the image at 1920 x 1080px

See results below for yourself

3. 3D NURBS Modeling

Rhino

For this section I am developing my idea of a smart cast. a 3d printed cast for settings break or a sprain with an onboard set of sensors to warn the user to there being to rough on there mending bones. I will be exploring this idea using rhino and grasshopper.

Arm 3D model by Artec 3D

I was able to find a model of an arm to use as a template from Artec 3D

I brought it into my file using import The gumball was used to position the part roughly around the origin In the SUBD menu I spawned a cylinder and used the face selection filter to remove the top and bottom to create a pipe shape I used the edge selection filter and the gumball to move the edges around to conform to the shape of the arm. For the thumb loop I used the bridge edge command to create some extra geometry After some experimenting with SUBD in grashopper I decided it was going to be easier to copy my SUBD form and convert it into a surface using ToNURBS I needed to refresh myself on some grasshopper so I found a really nice tutorial on Youtube by Thomas Zwart

The workflow was the following

  • Brought the surface into grasshopper using a surface container
  • Used PopGeo to create a bunch of points on the surface
  • Created a Voronoi3D using the points as inputs
  • Created a bounding box to constrain the Voronoi3D
  • Found the curves where the Voronoi3D intersects with the surface using brep|brep
  • Converted curves to pline (Polyline) at each Disc(Discontinuity)
  • offset the plines towards there center using ‘average’ and ‘scale’ to create thickness
  • used loft to create a surface from each set of curves

  • Then DeBrep(Deconstruct Brep) and feed the faces into a mesh node
  • Once we have the mesh we can now use mesh weld to make sure our thickened mesh will stick together
  • I used a wbThicken (Thicken Mesh) to give the walls thickness
  • Lastly I used a subdivision surface to smooth out the mesh Now that the mesh is complete we can go back and tweak the values of the offset and the mesh thicken to the desired proportions I also decided to go back and add more points to the original populate node to make the mesh more dense I baked out the mesh and then created a mesh cylinder in rhino and positioned it on the wrist using the gumball. This will represent the housing for the sensors In order to visualize my idea brought the mesh into blender to make an animation I reused the scene that I made for my first idea I added a few spheres using an array modifier to represent a simple display I once again used models from blender kit to fill out areas of my design. Here sticking a chip on my housing I felt was enough to get the idea across the idea that this is a lofi electronic housing I used a emission shader for the display To create the animation I keyframed the location, rotation and focal length of the camera at over the course of 240 frames. This was because I wanted 10 seconds of video at 24 frames per second. I also used a keyframe to control the value of a remesh modifier in order to create the effect of the part materializing out of the air.

The final video was edited in Blenders built in video editor adding music and titles. In this case I for some reason felt that the whole thing had a 90’s dance vibe so the music is as below

Music by Emmraan from Pixabay

In Summary

My thought and evaluations on software used this week;

  • Pure Ref I will continue to use PureRef to gather references and research. As I am using it on the free tier it is a fantastic took to keep all my reference in one place

  • Concepts Again I will continue to use concepts, for me this is where most of the designing really happens and its ability to keep all my ideas on one big page is very useful.

  • Blender While I really like using blender I feel its strengths for my projects lay in visualization. therefore it will probably not be a primary modeling tool for me. I will likely be exporting files from other packages into it for all renders and animations though.

  • Rhino As with blender Rhino and Grasshopper are likely going to be situational for me. If I go down the route of the cast then I will likely be generating the lattice in Grasshopper but the bulk of my modeling work will get done in my usual software that I didn’t get a chance to use this week.

  • Fusion 360 Unfortunately I didn’t get to use my preferred software this week as I wanted to start where I was less familiar and end on something easier for me. (But I ran out of time) For me Fusion 360 is where all my ideas will be refined. There may be elements generated in other software but the bulk of refining the form and critical dimensions will be done in Fusion

See below link to to files created this week:

Week 2 Files

End