As of this post, everything I have designed in CAD has had a process of learning through errors and changing my original plan to a more fitting design. Although in many real-life situations, it is imperative to learn from mistakes and improve upon the original product, I have talked to several people in this branch of work and many commented on the importance of having an original model which shows the itty-bitty details of the building. This is why I started to replicate the STEM building in Blender. Below this, is the first floor of the STEM building. From the design, you are able to see that the product I CADed is not exactly the same as the original structure at my school as there are some errors and some size differences. As I was creating the first floor, I was also moving on to the final product which is remodeling the Kenan Auditorium. I asked several teachers and students that use the building what improvements they would like to see in the Auditorium. Individuals expressed these 3 concerns: a lack of space, the scenery of the building to the left(due to the trash bins), and the difficulty to transport items on wheels from the bottom floor to the 2nd floor. With this in mind, I will create some sketches of renovations my peers and I believe would improve the usefulness of the building while also having it look aesthetically pleasing in the next post.

Knowing how to use the loop cut and other functions, I created a design of a house containing all the skills I have learned. Designing this house took me much longer than any other project as I had many different components to the house. From the extruded portions of the design to the objects I used the bevel on. The extruded part of the kitchen where it’s beveled took me the longest as it kept on altering another way, however, with time and patience, I finally designed the way I wanted to. I also learned how to delete certain parts of a section(the windows) in order to make it look more realistic.

Further expanding my knowledge

As I designed the previous house I noticed that there were many things I did not learn to do. For example, one of the main things I taught myself to do was loop cut. This function allowed me to separate my object into tiny pieces, making it possible for me to be more specific in my design. I also learned how to use the bevel to curve some of my designs and extrude regions of the design.

Introduction to Blender

After some talks with my independent advisor, we concluded that the best action to take was to learn how to CAD in Blender. This App is way more complicated than Onshape, however, it provides me with different tools and mechanisms that improve my design. After a little bit more experience with this application, I hope to create a realistic model of a building that will include the use of color and lighting to improve the appearance of the building.

After knowing how to convert 2d objects into 3d ones, I wanted to create a building I had seen in real life to have a well-established rubric and guide that I had to follow. I decided to design the Greensboro coliseum as I had gone there for a concert a couple of weeks ago. Due to the set dimensions of the building, I had to make sure each and every single line was measured correctly. After that tedious process, I extruded(added) it and the once 2d shape came to life. After this, the next step was creating the different floors of the stadium. However, this process needed different functions and also the use of sketches and planes in different sections of the building. I was unable to create the second floor, but I was finally able to create a different plane on the right side of the building and extrude(remove) a piece of the wall which is a step in the right direction for next time.

This week I have further expanded my knowledge of Onshape. For example, I have learned how to add different shapes and new functions that make the different sketches more aesthetically pleasing. The model of the car was mainly lining up the circles and building construction lines. These construction lines dictate the spacing of all the variables such as the wheels and the rim. Making the rims of the Truck took a while as I used the construction lines, dimensions, and also the button that mirrors different variables in able to obtain the correct spacing. For the bottom skecth, I used the same principles, but in the end, I extruded the object in order to make it 3d.

These several weeks I have been working on the basics of OnShape and I have been doing some readings on how some designs can affect Human Behavioral. I have spent most of my time looking at videos to learn the basics and the fundamental parts of Onshape. I feel like this stage of learning how to design using a new software is a very challenging one and also a very important one. I have used other CADing software like Tinkercad before. However, OnShape is just on another level as it’s not only basically learning a new language but also gets into more specific details than Tinker Cad. I know it’s essential to learn well all the mechanics of the software in order to easily succeed in the upcoming months as it will be the foundation of this learning experience which I will build upon.

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