Week 0 - Computer-Aided Design

Prior Experience: 3/5

I've I pretty much have 0 experience with CAD. I vaguely know what it is, and we got a 1 hour intro on it during my freshman year MechE FPOP, but I literally don't even know how to make a rectangular prism. I do have Fusion 360 installed from those days though!

The Idea

One idea I have for a final project is a "Baba is You" inspired lamp, controlled by a sliding tile puzzle (like the 15 game). "Baba is You" is a puzzle video game where a player forms rules inside the game by moving around tiles. In my project, one would slide the tiles on the puzzle board to form rules like "BABA IS BLUE" (e.g. to change the color of lamp) or "SOUND IS ON" (e.g. to play music) or "SAFE IS OPEN" (e.g. to open the safe).

The lamp will be in the shape of the main character Baba:

The sliding tile puzzle will look something like this:

CADding a puzzle piece

The puzzle piece will be square, with tabs on the top and left edges, and slots on the bottom and right edges. This will ensure that all puzzle pieces will be able to slide past each other.

Since the puzzle piece is square, it was actually not too bad to CAD.I first created a sketch, within which I created a rectangle. I constrained the sides to be equal so that it would be a square.

I then extruded the sketch by the piece thickness, so that I had a 3D square piece.Then on each side face of the piece, I drew a sketch of the rectangle that would either be extruded outwards or inwards to form the sliding tracks. I extruded them.

I made sure to make everything parametric, so that I could easily change the dimensions of the piece, the magnet holes, the sliding tracks, and the clearances. The preliminary design for the puzzle piece is done! I'll probably make some changes later depending on tests of how well the pieces fit together and slide around.

CADding the puzzle board

The CAD for the puzzle board followed a similar process. I first created a square, which I then extruded to form a 3D board. Then, within that square, I created a smaller square, which I extruded downward to cut out a cavity for the pieces to go in. Then on each of the inner side faces of the board, I drew a sketch of the rectangle that would either be extruded outwards or inwards to form the sliding tracks. I extruded them. Again, I made sure to make everything parametric. Here is the result:

Other Final Project Ideas

My final project ideas were mostly guided by my interests and personal needs. I'm currently learning Chinese, like playing puzzle games, and enjoy gardening.