Before I started I had to figure out what I was going to design. So I went online looking for cool things to make. As I was scrolling I found cool organic looking designs that were created using Topology Optimization. So I decided to use Solidworks Topology Study to make my alien looking part. First I had to make my part. I decided to make a pencil cup for my drawing supplies.

After watching a very basic tutorial video I created a topology study in SolidWorks for my part. I placed the relevant loads on my part, fixing on the bottom face (green arrows), a pressure on the top faces of 1 MPa (Red Arrows) and Torque of 1 Nm on the top face ring (Purple Arrow). After placing the loads I told SolidWorks to run the optimization while minimizing mass and maintaining stiffness. The study took about forty minutes and generated a nice alien looking mesh.

I used a an Ultimaker 5S with Black PLA to print this. In order to get it to print in under a day I raised the layer height to 0.2 mm and changed the nozzle size to 0.6 mm. The print took roughly 16 hrs and looked really good.

For the 3D scanning section of my assignment I decided to 3D Scan the first thing I had in my vicinity, my disposable coffee cup. At first I tried to scan it a few times only to realize that the scanner doesn't stop automatically and I have to stop it myself. I relized this after half an hour of letting it run. After I figured out how to use the software. I stopped the scanner when it correctly interpolated the coffee cup mesh. This was after 2 minutes and it generated 1,852,290 faces and 923,129 vertices. I played around with meshlab to try and fix the some of the mesh and 3D print it, however It ultimately crashed and I was too tired to try it again.