These past 2 weeks were a lot of fun for me. I have been using 3D modelling software for a couple years now, and Autodesk has by far the best products. I learned AutoCad and Inventor in high school, so fusion 360 was really easy for me to get the hang of because its essentially just Inventor with a whole lot of bells and whistles. To refresh my memory, I chose to model the bolt. Yeah, it was probably the easiest design template to pick, but I felt like it had all the basics: chamfers, fillets, extrudes, revolutions, etc. 

I definitely noticed that I am much more comfortable with the parametric modelling than the free form stuff. Something in me just doesn’t like eyeballing or grabbing and pulling the free form designs. Because of this, I was very grateful for our art and design mentors as they seemed really comfortable with the free form modelling.

In the spirit of shaking the rust off of my 3D cad skills, I thought it would be nice if I made something for my friend who is coming down to visit this weekend. The picture below is my 3D model of a logo for a team that we are both big fans of.

I have also started thinking about my semester project. I am currently torn between two ideas. Im either going to make a Stirling engine, which is just a fancy candle-powered wheel, or an audrino powered rotating LED display. The Stirling engine is definitely more 3D printer dependent, so I have already started modelling my design for it. Here is what I have so far:

I’m really looking forward to being able to use this software that I know with my brand new knowledge of 3D printing to make some really cool things!