2. Computer-aided design

Vectorizing an image in Affinity

1. Open Affinity and click the green + button.

2. Open the image you want to vectorize.

3. Search the vector section and select image trace.

4. Adjust threshold and curves. Then click apply.

5. Now you have paths. Change colors if needed.

5.1. Select the part and apply desired color.

5.2. Repeat the process until needed.

After that you will have your vectorized image complete.

6. Export your image in SVG

6.1 Affinity has an advanced window to chose the settings of your export, select what adjust to your necesities

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Vectorizing an image in Adobe Illustrator

1. Open Illustrator and select open file.

2. Open the image you want to vectorize.

3. Search the object section in the tool section and select image trace and click make (do not expand yet).

3.1 You can also use the right panel control and select image trace. Either way is fine.

Note: If your image is to big, Adobe recomends you to rasterize it.

If you do not rasterize it the image tracing will take more time, but have higher fidelity.

3.2 To rasterize, go to object in the tool section and select rasterize.

3.3 Change the parameters to your necesities

4. Move the image trace parameters to your necesities, I chose the color mode and moved the advanced features to my liking. Then clicked expand.

If you rasterized, the results will change a little (have less fidelity to the original image, in this case it colored the ear outline with yellow, but can be fixed)

5. After expanding, you have your vectorized image. (This was the result without rasterizing, ready to export).

6. Go to file and select export in SVG.

Fixing error: One path was merged with another of a different color. So I used the scissors tool (C) to cut and separate them

6. Once they were different paths I change the ear outline to its correct color. Now the vector is ready to export.

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One big difference between both is that Adobe Illustrator offers more adjustable parameters. Allowing better control over colors and detail, representing the original image more accurately. While Affinity has has smoother line termination and visually pleasing curves, it has limited control over the number of colors. That sometimes lead to the misinterpretation of shapes during automatic vectorization.

However, due to Adobe being a paid software, Affinity offers a great free alternative. I often use it when I'm not at college (we have an Adobe license but only on institutional computers).

3D Design

There are several 3D softwares with different uses, the principal are parametric design (SolidWorks, Fusion 360, Onshape) and direct modeling (Blender,Maya). Because of the nature of my project I will be focussing on parametric design, specifically with Onshape and Autodesk Inventor. The exercise was the basic form of a pill dispenser, where I principally used basic operations (add, remove, shells, and fillets). The general workflow was:

1. Skectch the body with a circle and extrude it
2. Shell the cylinder
3. Sketch a rectangle and do a negative extrusion (to make exit of the dispenser)
4. Sketch an arc and extrude it to match the thickness of the dispenser
5. Extrude a wall to contain the pills
6. Round the edges
7. Renderize or change its appereance

Modeling in Onshape

1. Create a sketch on top plane and draw a circle.

Variables: write (#) and assign a name and dimension.

2. Extrude and shell the extrusion (3 mm).

3. On the right plane, draw a rectangle for the opening.

4. Extrude up to the exterior face of our base.

5. Create a sketch at the bottom and draw two arcs.

6. Extrude the sketch to create the floor and a wall.

7. Fillet the edges.

7.1. Change the fillet parameters.

8. Change the part's colors.

8.1 Edit the appearance (translucent view).

9. Export the part (STEP format).

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Modeling in Inventor

1. Sketch a circle and extrude it.

2. Shell the extrusion.

3. Draw a rectangle for the opening.

4. Extrude (remove) the rectangle.

5. Sketch at the bottom, 2 arcs

6. Extrude the floor.

7. Extrude the wall.

8. Fillet the edges.

9. Fillet the interior edges.

10. Assign a material.

11. Run the Inventor Studio (Renderize)

12. Select a source of light.

13. Renderize.

14. Export

Render 1

Render 2

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Both softwares are pretty good options and choosing one depends on your design. Onshape is a cloud-based and accessible alternative, that is efficient for modeling and collaboration. However, rendering options are limited (can change color but not add textures). While Inventor allows rendering directly inside the software, with ambience lights, materials. But can take a while to rendireze depending of your computer and the quality of the image.

Media Compression

Media compression is important while documenting our process. Some media files (images, video, audio) are often large and by compressing it we are not only reducing its size but speeding up the page load times.

For Images I use Xconvert on my phone and, because it allows me to control the compressing parameters and file format, if the images are on my computer I either use the Photos app or share them via phone link to compress them in Xconvert and share them back to my computer.

For videos I use FFMPEG, that works on our computer terminal and has different parameters that we can edit if we write them. Its interface can be confusing but its really practical.

Compressing images with XnConvert

1. Install XnConvert on your phone.

2. Open the app and select the folder your images are. In this case downloads.

3. Select the images you want to compress. However XnConvert can only do batches of 10, if you select more, the app will only process 10.

4. Change the parameters to your needs, you can change the file type, the quality and the size percentage.

5.Click on convert and you will have the result files, its size appears at the bottom corner.

7. Click on the share icon. I have my cellphone and computer syncronized, so I select my computer.

8. The file's share interface will appear, click on the circle of the device.

8.2 After clicking the center circle it will load the images.

8.3 After sending all the images to my computer, it will actualize its status to "Shared"

On my computer appears a notification that my files were sended.

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Compressing images with Photos (computer)

1. Select the image you want to compress, right click to select open with "Photos"

2. Right click and select resize image.

3. Move the parameters to your liking. You can select PNG, TIF, BMP or JPG as file type. I selected JPG and controled the parameters until the "new" size was small enough.

4. Save and rename your file.

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Compressing Videos with FFMPEG

1. Download FFmpeg from the official site. And select the package compatible with your device.

2. Select the zip file and expand it.

3. Write "env" in the Windows search bar and select "Edit the system environment variables".

4. Create a new variable and copy the path to the extracted FFMPEG bin folder.

5. Open the Terminal, and Run the following command:

ffmpeg -i "name or path of your file".mp4 -vf "scale=-2:720" -c:v libx264 -preset slow -crf 30 -pix_fmt yuv420p -movflags +faststart -an "name of your compressed file".mp4>

6. Enter the command and it will process it.

The original video had a size of 6.26MB.

While the compressed video new size is of 200 KB aprox.

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For large batches I prefer XnConvert, even if I need to share them back and forward between my computer (Phone Link is pretty fast and XnConvert has more resize parameters). However for single files on my computer that I need fast, I use the Photos app.

Files

Affinity Illustrator Onshape Inventor