week 1: computer-aided design

Prior knowledge level: 2/5

In high school freshman year, I took a class on CAD modeling and design, so I knew the basics, such as making sketches and extruding or cutting them. I also minimally worked on a CAD model in 2.00B last year.

Formats

I downloaded image magick so I can compress my images in the mac terminal: https://imagemagick.org/script/download.php.

brew install imagemagick

To compress, I ran:

convert mjOs3d7.jpeg -sampling-factor 4:2:0 -strip -quality 60 -interlace JPEG -colorspace RGB coverimage2.jpeg

To compress multiple images, I ran, based on https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/516435/imagemagick-convert-compress-all-files-in-the-directory:

find . -type f -name '*.jpeg' -exec bash -c 'convert -strip -interlace Plane -gaussian-blur 0.05 -quality 70% "$1" "${1%.jpeg}_compressed.jpg" ' bash  {} \;

Project Ideation & CAD

This week's assignment is to come up with a potential final project idea and CAD it. My first idea was to make some sort of table or desk for jigsaw puzzles, or to make a wall-mounted jewelry organizer, but I realized I also have to include an embedded programming portion.

After looking at a bunch of final projects, in particular this one (http://fab.cba.mit.edu/classes/863.21/Architecture/people/YanjunEmilyLiu/FinalProject.html), I decided that I wanted to make an LED pixel display shelf that lights up different colors when objects are placed over different sections. It would be similar to the final project I linked, but with a sensing component to decide which pixels to light up, rather than a web interface for images.

Here is a sketch of my idea:

Fusion 360

I had Fusion 360 downloaded from a previous class that I took last semester. I had some issues with CAD, since I kind of forgot how anything worked, but it ended up being fine.

For some reason, the left hand side bar where all the sketches and bodies are keeps going to a different window on my computer, and I legitimately could not find it for 10 minutes and couldn't do anything since I don't know any of the keyboard commands. It was annoying but I figured it out.

In progress, using pattern and mirror:

Final picture:

It's parametric:

It's parametric! Here are a version with it re-dimensioned:

I also made an in-canvas render of it:

Embedded Programming