“Week 1”

The aim of this week was to learn the basic functions of Fusion and parametric modelling. Very simple, measure 5 simple things around my house and build one in Fusion.

Task 1: I started by measuring a candle container which was made out of a reused glass bottle. I quickly learned that this was a far more intricate object than I originally anticipated. Because the surface was not just one smooth surface I had to repeatedly measure the dimensions of every change. It could have been worse but it wasn’t the singular XYZ dimensions I had originally thought of. This led me to think about the task in a new light. What ARE the simplest objects I can find because not every object that appears simple on the cover is actually simple and I didn’t want to spend all day measuring meaningless objects.

I found a door stop (The thing attached to the wall that the door bumps into.). This was far simpler than the candle stick but I could see the engineering choices behind it. The 1mm thick stainless steel outer surface on the base, which covered the screw fixings to the wall, sized appropriately to allow enough material for the screws to hold and maintain structural integrity. Next the shaft, smaller in diameter to the base which joined on in concentric fashion. Had the same 1mm stainless steel sheet but the internals I don’t know as I did not fully dismantle, I suspect it contains some sort of plastic reinforcement and a way to fix it to the base. Anyhow, the shaft had a hard rubber stop in the end to cushion the door on impact. However, this stop was loosely fitted which I am surprised isn’t more of a design flaw but a curious child could easily ruin that and the door.

Task 2: I Constructed the doorstop in Fusion by using concentric extrusions starting with the baseplate and crteating sketches on each surface as I built the object outwards. To build the shaft I extruded a hollow 1mm thick shaft and then from the same origin of that sketch I drew a created a new sketch which I extruded inside the hollow shaft to provide the stop for the rubber stop roughly resembling the construction of the real thing, however because I did not know what the real internals looked like this was merely a compromise.

Fusion construction