Pegleggy – 3D Toy Design
June 24, 2011
Yes, it’s a month after I graduated and I’m finally getting around to documenting my homework. Like a boss.
We had to create something for in 3D for our Digital Fabrication class. I initially made a jewelbox, as per the instructions gave us and it took an excruciatingly long time. However, it allowed me to really sit with VectorWorks and figure out the ins and outs of the program. After which, I saw a quick sketch I made in my sketchbook and decided I decided I wanted to make this a full blown character.
PegLeggy is a former swashbuckler and war hero, having lived through the war. He is fed up with the current generation’s inability to remember the past. That’s why he’s so irate.
The majority of the build for this character is using ‘Extrude Shape to Path’ and then ‘Fillet Edges’, however, I am quite happy with the result. Most people will tell you that you should not try touse VectorWorks for organic shapes, but for this particular model, I think it came out quite nicely.
Getting it printed at AMS involved surprisingly few issues. You may be able to see there is an issue on the right side of it’s neck, where it fillets up into the head, but aside from that, no real issues. When you use an additive powder process for building your 3D model, at least in the case of NYU’s AMS, you need to infiltrate the build with a bonding agent, to make sure it doesn’t crumble in your hand. I bought Corrie a burrito and used her Cyanoacrylate and it holds well, but it still feels fragile.
Here are a few images of the process, from the Spring Show and my own documentation, care of Jeff Howard.
Rocking Chair – Now with Swanky Photos
June 24, 2011
I was very happy with the rocking chair that Shahar and I created for Digital Fabrication, so I called up my friend Jeff Howard and we did proper documentation for the rocking chair. I am still amazed by how comfortable the chair is. Here are a handful.
2 1/2D Chair
May 4, 2011
Our second assignment for Digital Fabrication was to build a chair with ITP’s new CNC machine. We went through several revisions and iterations with the chair concept before spending around 20 hours in front of the CNC machine, but the outcome is pretty fun.
Original concept
The original idea for the class was to quickly make a chair in 2 or three weeks, so we threw together a design for a skull chair. Yes, the idea for a skull chair was unsurprisingly my idea.
After we had a full sketch figured out, we decided we should do something more difficult and artistic. We decided upon a bidirectional rocking chair with an organic pattern. I sketched out the design and then Shahar imported it into Rhino for Mac. The original design was incredibly fun, but there is an inherent issue with building a bidirectional rocking chair, namely…it wouldn’t rock. Our design would have hit the opposing direction edges. We scrapped the bidirectionality and just went with a chair with an organic voronoi pattern. Shahar did a tremendous amount of work in Rhino and tried a bunch of organic interpreters and plugins. In the end, we liked the design I hand made in Illustrator.
Process
The cutting of the chair was what the Heugenots would call a total freakin’ nightmare. For the sides, we used 1″ plywood and for the seat and back, we rounded the seat, so we laminated two 4x4x1 plywood boards and left them overnight. We spent over 3 hours for each side, 5 hours for the seat and 7 hours for the back. This does not include the hour of sanding and routing the edges or the cleanup. We had an issue with the seat, where our cutting depth was set at .05 and apparently the seat was not exactly 2″, but a bit more, so we had to hand route the rest of the seat. The back had a depth cut of 1″ or so, so it chipped in random places, which we will need to replace with wood glue(yes? no? Any suggestions are appreciated.).
Final Build
Has yet to be done, but you will see the final result if you come to the Spring Show!
EXEgist – Final Thoughts
April 8, 2011We had the final presentation for EXEgist and I wanted to map out my final thoughts, especially things we figured out on the way.
1. Much to learn: Rails and Polymorphism
We hit a ton of walls regarding when using Sinatra and DataMapper. Specifically we were trying to build a system where any sentence could have comments and finally, comment on comments. Everyone we spoke to on a technical level mentioned that we should use Rails as it’s modular structure allows you to call on comments in a smarter fashion than we built it. Complementing this idea, enabling polymorphic databases structures either in Sinatra or Rails is where we crashed and burned. If we had the ability to call comments that belonged to other comments, that would have been half the work. When we introduced the partial, it allowed us to wrap our comment sentences with a tags and organize if they were long or short comments.
2. Learn from your Competition
About a week before we had to present, we learned about websites that achieved a similar goal to our project. RapGenius.com is a fascinating site that allows users to explain rap lyrics for those who are less versed in the world of Lil’ Wayne or Kanye West. They have a smart user interaction; when you highlight a given text, an ‘Explain’ button pops up and you can write in your answer.
3. Future features
There were so many features we wanted to implement and never got a chance to add them.
1. Mute and Solo – We hope to add a list of the commentors on the left side. Each commentor can be soloed, so as to see only their comments in the article. They can also be muted, in the event you don’t have to read their responses.
2. Commenting Functionality – The current system is clumsy and I believe most users would never find ways of reading the comments. Instead,
3. Paragraph specific data – Included on the side, we would add how many comments are on any given paragraph.
4. The balance of comments – By allowing people to react on any given sentence, most users ended up commenting in the first two paragraphs and the comments thinned out the farther you went. I’m not sure how to incentivize commenting throughout and perhaps there is no need, but for writers who are looking for analysis throughout their work would appreciate the analysis capability.
4. Thank you
A huge thanks to Greg Borenstein, Rune Madsen, Oren from Heroku, Clay, and everyone who helped us through this project.
Posted in Designing Conversation Spaces | Leave a commentMasters of Mastercam
April 8, 2011Posted in Digital Fabrication | Leave a comment