Computer Aided Design

Introduction to Computer Aided Design

As I am well versed in Adobe Photoshop, I used PS to remove the background of a photo instead of GIMP.

How-to:

  1. After opening your image in Ps, click onto the Magic Wand Tool (W) and click on the object you want to take the background away from
  2. After selecting one point of your object (does not have to be perfect), click on “Select Subject”. This will make Ps outline your object for you
  3. Then right-click and press on “Select Inverse”, this selects the background
  4. From there, either press the delete button or use your brush tool to delete the background. You will release that your object will not get deleted.

Creating Models

How-to:

  1. I started by sketching the nametag, careful not to place the circle that would be the ring too far at the end in case it ends up breaking.
  2. After I have finished sketching, I extruded the outer ring to a thickness of 3mm and the base to a thickness of 1.5mm.
  3. I then used the font “Arial” and wrote down my nickname before extruding it to a thickness of 1.5mm.
  4. Despite the name tag going smoothly, one thing I could do to “improve” would be to use the trimming tool to trim off the excess lines that overlapped on the sketch just to make it more seamless.

I later sliced my name tag on Cura and proceeded to print my name tag in the 3D printer.

Thing to take note of:

  • When saving on Fusion360, save it as an STL File
  • When saving on Cura, save it as a G-code File

Further Fusion 360 design techniques

I followed the tutorial by Taylor Stein and it went rather smooth as I did not run into any major problems.

I learnt today how to change the material of the wood under Modify> Physical Material. To apply, drag the chosen material to your object instead of just clicking it.

This is the difference between before and after changing the thickness to 5mm. (though it is not very obvious)

I increased the length of the laptop stand to be 320.1mm as the length of my Macbook is 304.1mm.

Parametric Design

How-to “make a box”:

  • Set parameters and use only them
  • Set separate components for different faces
  • When mirroring an object, be sure to set midpoints and remember to set it to "bodies". If not there will be an error
  • Be sure to draw from the origin
  • When combining the two faces, be sure to select "cut" to cut the fingers into the objects instead of combining
  • To check if the components are separate, click on "inspect" and click on "Component Color Cycling Toggle