Tuesday, 1 May 2012

Starting Project 2

I started work on this project in the 2nd week of the break.

I decided from the beginning to model the upper and lower housings separately rather than creating one solid body and using a 'split' command to generate the parts.

My first attempt at the bottom housing was a series of solid lofts which i planned to shell.



Three lofts used to generate the lower housing.

I could see straight away that this method wasn't going to generate a continuous smooth surface; this was confirmed when I shelled the object.


The shelled lofts.

I discovered the surfaces toolbar and started experimenting with the different commands. I decided to try and generate the form using a surface loft.

Generating the surface loft using a series of profiles and one guide curve at the base.

The completed loft.




 Using an extrusion to create the bottom face and a thicken to add wall thickness.

I found the surface loft command very easy to use; I ran into less errors than I did with solid lofting. I spent most of the time adjusting the profiles to create the smoothest and most accurate surface I could. 

With the main body done, I could start work on the interior details and components, including the circuit board, wheel, lens and cord. 

Interior details of lower housing.

Top view showing interior components.

Exploded view.

I paid attention to detail and how it all fits together. (exploded view)

I didn't run into any problems modelling the interior components. I thought it was a good kind of refresher course for skills like editing parts inside an assembly that were introduced with the bottle assignment.

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