8th Week - LED Pyramid

This week in AutoCAD, the groups have started to finalize their project ideas. My group is sticking with the LED Arduino combination but as the picture above suggests we will not be making the traditional cube. The new plan is to 3d print a pyramid shell which will contain our RGB LEDs. The plan to make a base that will house the Arduino and all of the excess wires is still in development. That is the basic idea that has been brought up this week and will be used, however, we are still thinking of what can be added to add some extra levels of complexity.

7th Week - Project Idea

This week in CAD, the class has broken into lots of mini groups and started to brainstorm different project ideas that incorporate as many different tools and materials as possible. My group has taken a liking to using Arduinos and has been considering make a LED cube. This will take lots of wiring and soldering which are both in my oppion fun to do. In order to work in some extra techniques we are thinking of either making a wooden or metal base to house the wires and Arduino.

6th Week - Sparks

 This week in CAD, the class started to use several different new tools.We started using soldering irons, a MIG welder,  a plasma torch, and a cnc laser router. I did not personally use the soldering iron this week as they were very popular and in use constantly but I have already used soldering irons in the past and plan on incorporating their use into my future projects. The plasma torch, shown in the image above, was fun and easy to use and all most everyone took the time to cut some design into the pieces of scrap metal we had lying around the shop. To practice using the laser router we made some designs in a new program, which I have forgotten the name of, and attached a marker to the end of the router so as to save material and draw onto some pieces of paper.

5th Week - Arduino Projects

This week in CAD, we continued to learn about Arduinos. Some of the new components used were the knob, pressure sensor, and tilt sensor. The two directional tilt sensor functioned similarly to a switch, as I used to turn a light on and off depending on which way it was tilted. The pressure sensor worked well at changing the intensity at which an LED was lit. Another cool piece of coding that we looked at was one that made a series of LED lights turn on and off so that it looked like the car from the show Night Rider.
Some small groups were assembled to think of an idea for a project to work on that involves Arduinos and our group settled on the idea of making an LED cube which we can light up in different patterns using the Arduino.

4th Week - Arduino

This week in CAD, the class started coding for Arduinos. Using the Arduino sketch program we looked at some of the sample coding, like the blink code which we used to make an LED cycle threw an on off pattern. Using that I wrote SOS in Morse code and had both a LED flashing and a speaker playing the pattern. Some of the code is simple and easy to understand like that of the blink program, but others are a bit trickier like the servo code in the image above which turns a motor clockwise and counterclockwise. I did enjoy working with the Arduinos this week and the actual assembling of the components is my favorite part.

3rd Week - Layouts & Rendering

This week in AutoCAD, we worked on designing different layouts for the outdoor leaning environment. The top image shows one of the layouts that I worked on this week. Something new this week was texturing in AutoCAD, which can be seen in the bottom image. I learned how to change put different materials like grass or wood onto the objects. Another new feature that I learned this week was how to render out images in AutoCAD which is how I was able to get the lower image. 

2nd Week - Tables and Chairs

This week in AutoCAD, the class started designing outdoor furniture that is intended to be placed in the school's up and coming Learning Garden. I personally worked on a 3D design of a classic looking pic nick table, which provides both a place to sit and a writing surface to work on. The file seems to have gone missing so I was unable to upload a photo of the table but I did have a side product which can be seen above. The above chair was made by first drawing curved side profile of the chair and then I used the extrude tool to transform it into a 3D chair. Next week I will start working on some less traditional table and chair designs that are both functional and have an attractive appearance.