Hello everyone, hope you are doing well. Today I want to discuss a few of my ongoing projects and future ideas in CAD. I have recently started learning CAD and not gonna lie, it has been really fun. The software i am using is called AutoDesk Fusion 360, which i will link down below.
https://www.autodesk.in/products/fusion-360/overview?term=1-YEAR&tab=subscription (This is not a marketing or affiliate link btw)
My first project: The guitar
This was the first thing i’ve ever made using CAD. It involved a lot of simple commands such as extrude, chamfer and cut, whose details I won’t bore you with. I did have a little bit of trouble with making the strings initially, but later on I learnt new commands which were well suited to making the strings I needed, thus eliminating the problem. Another tricky part of this build was the curve on the tuning knobs of the guitar, which are quite circular and so, difficult to model using CAD. I honestly just brute forced the problem, trying many different variations and sizes of chamfers until i got a smooth object, which although not perfect, seemed to do the trick. This is just the first part of the process though. To make this into a fully functioning guitar, I will have to add mechanisms and other joints built into the guitar, allowing for motion of the tuning knobs. I will also have to configure the guitar to match the lengths and the thickness of the strings, but I don’t think this project will ever make it into the real world, considering the enormous size of the 3d printer I’ll need.
The silhouette approach
This was a really interesting design, partly because of its illusion of complexity. A teacup may seem very challenging to model in CAD, and it is, but only if you think about it from a certain way. If you try to approach it as making individual components and stitching them together or using a block of material and carving it down to a teacup, you’d be putting in a lot more effort than you need too. To make these sorts of designs, all u need to make is a 2d face, stemming from the origin. For this case, it will look something like how the graph of x^2 looks in the first quadrant. Then all thats needed to complete the basic shape is to ‘revolve’ that 2d face 360 degrees from the origin, resulting in a cup shape being formed, with the middle of the cup being the origin. This is the same thing that happens when integrating to find the volume of revolution of a body. In fact, it is quite easy to find out the exact volume of material needed to make this cup, if we know the mathematical equations that make up the original 2d ‘face’. The plate and the extrusions of the cup were also made in the same way. Even the handle of the teacup was made in the same way, but instead of revolving the face 360 degrees about the origin, it was revolved about 8 degrees, which gave it its short length.
Overall, this software is quite intuitive and easy to use once u learn it well, and it even gives you the option to build using organic shapes and render high quality images. I will be doing more projects using CAD, so stay tuned until then. I will see you all in the next post, bye for now.