[I don’t have a day by day update for this week, since my progress has been slow.]

For the design week, I started off by watching a fab academy video.

According to the video, for this week, I had to pick any final project that I wanted to work on, and learn to design it using the tools that the video covered.

For 2D design, the following tools were recommended,

Raster

1. GIMP
2. Photoshop
3. Mypaint for sketches (lets you choose material brush – emulates drawing on material)
4. Image magick (can convert existing image into any image format)

Vector

1. Inkscape
2. Illustrator
3. Free CAD video
4. Free CAD
5. Corel Draw
6. Layout
7. Scribus

For 3D DESIGN, some of the common terminologies we will be using as the weeks go by are

• CSG - Adding logic on shapes
• Constrained - adding relationships between drawings
• Hierarchical - changing one part changes everything associated with it
• Parametric - Everything in the drawing changes with a change in the parameters

For 3D, the video tutorial recommended the following tools,

1. Sketechup
2. TinderCAD
3. Blender
4. Rhinocerous
5. Grasshopper
6. Free CAD
7. Fusion 360
8. Autodesk
9. Solidworks
10. xDesign
11. Onshape
12. Maya alias 3Ds Max Cinema 4D houdini
13. Catia Creo NX
14. Magica Voxel Monolith

For simulations, the tutorial recommended the following tools,

1. Elmer
2. Cosmol
3. Simulation Simuli Abagus
4. Fusion 360
5. Ansys
6. Nostrom
7. Open dynamics engine
8. Modelica

For audio and video editing, the tutorial recommended the following tools,

1. Simple screen recorder
2. Audacity
3. Premiere after effects
4. mplayer simplayer VLC
5. HTML formats encoding

For game engines, the commonly used tools are,

1. Unity
2. Unreal

The idea behind the design week is to represent a tentative final project in as many ways as I can.

While working through the tools, I worked on creating basic geometric shapes, learning to push and pull, and break and combine objects.

For instance, I used GIMP and Inkscape for 2D design. On both, I learnt to draw basic shapes, combine two shapes. However, I’ve still not been able to subtract one shape from another. [I need to check with Richard on how I can do this on both these tools.]

Exercises on GIMP

Exercises on Inkscape

Apart from geometric shapes, I also tried to create objects from day-to-day life. So I designed a chess pawn (on M’s request). To design this pawn, I divided the pawn into multiple geometric shapes and assembled them together. I sketched it out to identify the individual parts, and then used gimp to recreate it. It’s not a perfect pawn – the imperfection I see is around the body of the pawn which is usually curved, while mine is boxy since I used a rectangular shape to create the body. Note to self: Learn to create curved objects on GIMP.

After that, I worked on Inkscape to create a packaging box. Again, similar to the pawn, I first drew this out on paper with basic geometric shapes, and then recreated the same on Inkscape. This is also incompletel; as you can see the side flaps should be like an equilateral triangle and they are curerntly a right angled triangle. I am still trying to figure out how I can fix this.

GIMP and INKSCAPE were mainly for 2D designs, so I moved to 3D designs. One of my fellow students at the class suggested I start with TinkerCAD since it is a userfriendly tool. TinkerCAD is a cloud-based design tool. Interestingly, it also has a short tutorial on how to create designs. I undertook the tutorial and got started with my designs.

I took a 3D printed model of what looked like a house floor plan and designed it using TinkerCAD.

Here is what the 3D printed model looks like.

Here is what my 3D design looks like on TinkerCAD.