A4: 3D Object Prototype — R2D2
For this assignment we were asked to develop our ability to 3D model for prototyping physical objects at a medium fidelity. We had free reign on what to make but the object that we made needed to include these 3 commands within the Rhinoceros modeling software: Extrusion, Revolution, and Boolean functions.
Design
I first began to brainstorm things that I wanted to build using the 3D model and I decided I wanted to make a figurine. However most figurines that were people would be very difficult to make so I decided to choose R2-D2 because of its cylinder-like body that included details that would require extrusions and revolutions. I also saw that making the legs for R2-D2 would require some boolean union commands to join the different shapes together.
I grabbed my notebook and began to sketch out the plan before I started working within the modeling software:
In Rhino I tried my best at copying what I had down on paper. The body was easiest and I broke it up into 3 main parts and commands. The middle part of the body was created using an extrude of a circle drawn on the top view and extruded upward. For the dome top I drew a circle in the right view, trimmed it to a 4th of a circle, and then revolved that piece around the y-axis. From there I created the bottom part of the body by lofting a smaller circle up to the bottom of the main cylinder part of the body.
Then came the legs which were mostly extrudes of shapes, along with lofts to create “feet.”
The most difficult part was creating the details on the dome where i actually needed to create a rectangle in the right view and had to revolve it around the y-axis in slices to create the small rectangles.
I used the boolean union command to piece the body and details together and I used the boolean difference command to created the holes in the body for the legs to be inserted.
After I completed my design in Rhino, I saved the file as an .stl and uploaded it into the makerbot application. I was able to configure my pieces onto the printing platform and I added a raft to the bottom of the print so that my pieces would not move during the process. The total time to print one body and two legs came out to be about 1 hour and 40 minutes. Here is what what resulted:
Analysis
After completing my model, I was very proud of creating something 3-dimensional from just sketches and my imagination. I was able to translate it into a file that a 3D printer could read and it was a faster and higher fidelity prototype than I could make out of other materials by hand. However when the initial prints came out the pegs on the legs were very fragile and one of the pegs broke when I tried inserting it into the body of the model. I ended up making another body and legs via another 3D print.
What went well was the initial sketching and planning of how I would create the overall shape of the model. I was able to really know what commands I would try and use to create R2D2 and it was less confusing than trying to figure it out on the spot mentally in Rhino. I was able to make a model that was not only a medium fidelity prototype but it was system of moving parts which added a lot more interaction to whoever was playing with it.
What I could do better next time is that I could have definitely created a better way of attaching the legs to R2-D2 or I could have just used the boolean union command to attach the legs to the model. This would be a compromise of creating supports but also it would have made the model more static and not very dynamic in the way that I created it. The pegs on the legs just broke when I tried to insert it and it was very frustrating and deemed my model incomplete.
