WEEK 7

 4/6/2021

For this week's lesson, we were introduced to a software called 'Fusion 360'. Basically, this software allows us to create a 3D model of our desired product design with accurate dimensions. Essentially, this software will be a great help to us as we proceed with our product design, however as of now, it seems like our group still needs more time getting familiar with this software. 

We first started exploring this software by creating our own keyring. This was highly frustrating to us as the instruction manual given was slightly different than the updated Fusion 360 layout that we downloaded, so we could not locate where certain features were, giving us a headache trying to locate them. Also, as all three of us were inexperienced with this software, it was difficult to help each other out too, making us all struggle. We occasionally ran into issues with extruding and using the offset feature as well, and till this day, we still have no idea what went wrong in those steps that we could not extrude or offset the keyring. We did manage to extrude and offset it in the end though. Eventually, we managed to figure things out and by the time we reached the step where we could insert texts, we were having fun choosing the fonts and designs. 

During the lesson itself, we learnt about the different constraint features. This lesson was less frustrating than our first attempt as not only were we slightly familiar with the software, but our teacher also demonstrated live on how to use the constraints. So the constraint sketches we did during lesson went rather smoothly. The problem came when we had to create a photo frame. We initially had a hard time choosing the correct dimensions that would fit the photo nicely. At first, the dimensions we chose were a little too small and the next dimensions we chose were slightly big. However, this was just a minor issue, the bigger challenge was creating the U-Shape frame. We were completely clueless on how to create the U-Shape frame. We kept facing problems like, not being able to extrude the frame, not being able to cut the the frame into a U shape, not being able to get the dimensions right and not being able to fillet the edges. We tried and tried and still nothing worked. Defeated, we asked our teacher how to create the U-Shape frame, and being the professional she is, she solved our problem immediately. Should have just asked her right away when we were unsure... On the bright side, we learnt how to change the material and physical appearance of our model! 

This Fusion 360 software sure makes us confused and frustrated but we are slowly getting used to it and having fun with it as well. Hopefully, we will be able to create a nice cat litter box model with this software in the near future! The pictures attached are our constraints sketch :p