Week 1: Computer Aided Design
Intro
This week’s assignments were to:
- plan and sketch a potential final project
- model (raster, vector, 2D, 3D, render, animate, simulate, …) a possible final project,
- compress your images and videos,
- and post a description with your design files on your class page
Brainstorming
I’ve always enjoyed spotting birds out on hikes, walks, and outside my window, but I’m not committed enough to the hobby to go bird watching. For my final project, I’m planning on making a birdhouse that will hang from a tree outside my window, and capture bird calls + environmental patterns, like trees and clouds moving, and create some sort of visual or audio display with it.
Design
I made some sketches of what the design could potentailly look like. I wanted to veer from the classic “house” shape (why should birds have to live in human houses?!), and opted for a more natural design. I was inspired by hanging rice paper lamps and hanging, weaved bird nests that some species create.
I will also need to integrate the following into the final design:
- Covered space at the top for electronics
- Hopper in the middle that dispenses birdfood using gravity
- Camera sensors, potentially looking downwards at the bottom tray
- Ring of cameras on top of the birdhouse
- Solar panels on top of the birdhouse
Modeling
I fed in the above images, as well as inspiration photos from a Pinterest board that I made for the project, to ChatGPT to generate a CAD script that creates the birdhouse in Fusion. To import the script into Fusion, I went to Utilities -> Scripts and Add-Ins -> + (to add script) -> Run script. The script runs a ChatGPT generated STEP assembly.