Hand and CAD Sketches

One of the reasons I started taking ID classes was to improve my skill with hand drawing. Early on, though, I found it easier to focus on SpaceClaim models to flesh out the basic “feel” of Imposing. The advantage of the CAD model is its speed; I could very quickly move through a large number of forms, tweaking details effortlessly. I didn’t have to worry about my hand sketching technique, and I could just work right through a bunch of ideas. Here are a few example sketches.

Physical Models

Here you see one of the SpaceClaim models, created in paper. Blake wrote an add-in that unfolds the model into a flat pattern, that I printed out and put together to see what it looks like in real-life. It wasn’t the easiest to assemble, as I printed it to fit entirely on one sheet of 8.5″ x 11″, but it came out rather nice.

I had an assortment of blue foam mock-ups, many of which I did not take pictures of. Some were based off of the CAD models, so were completely independent explorations. I probably spent more time on the CAD models, but there is something very valuable about crafting the physical prototype and being able to turn it over in your hands.

I feel that you understand the shape to a much greater depth if you have constructed it. Working with foam is also largely a subtractive process, taking material away from the blank block you start with. Working in CAD can both add and subtract, which adds a lot of flexibility, but you still begin with an empty workspace and build up. It is surprisingly different to build via addition rather than by subtraction, and I think each can lead you to quite different results, even with the same goal.

At this point, we were finally given our noun. I’ll cover that next time.

To begin with, I started by picking three adjectives to look at: sophisticated, dynamic and imposing. For each I created an image board, compiling images that characterized the adjective.

Sophisticated

For “sophisticated” I focused on two things, the elegance of nature in birds and flowers, and high-class items like violins and chandeliers.

Dynamic

“Dynamic” was all about motion. I included images of objects with high energy, like amusement park rides and fireworks, along with fluid motions. Waves are the definition of dynamic.

Imposing

To me, “imposing” relies heavily upon a concept of scale. Large things impose upon smaller things. Other than size, I found a sense of “vertical”-ness; tall and top-heavy objects seem to be imposing.

After creating the three image boards and defending my choice of imagery in class, I decided to run with Imposing. The next step was to proceed with hand sketches and sketch models of generic “imposing” forms, still without focus on an actual object.

The first thing to do was select the materials. I began by looking at many different materials, finding images online, as well as taking my own photos, including water, metal, rubber, plastic, paper, felt, and even butter.

Once I began looking at butter, my mind started cruising through all sorts of foods, which may not be the first thing you think of when asked to pick a “material”. It is interesting, however, how many foods have such characteristic textures and behaviors. It wasn’t long before I settled upon taffy:

I especially liked how dynamic and energetic taffy seemed on the pull. It seemed like the perfect material to illustrate a wide range of interactions. From here, it was time to explore with some sketches, both 2D and 3D.

I work as an Application Engineer for SpaceClaim, which means I spend a large portion of my waking hours using the software. Which, it turns out, allows me to create a model with far more detail that is probably FDA approved. I began work on a scale model of a dragonfly last August as a response to some of the new functionality we were introducing into SpaceClaim 2009. Here is what I ended up with:

Almost Finished Dragonfly

I learned a lot about SpaceClaim while building this little bug, so I figured I could share the experience and maybe show others what it can do. And possibly stroke my ego a bit while I’m at it.

The Idea

When I started, I was thinking more of a steampunk style insect. I had probably seen a picture on BoingBoing that I thought looked neato, and I remember searching Wikipedia for insect wings one afternoon. I found these:

Front View of Wings

Close-up of Wing Joint

After finding these images it didn’t take me long to drop the steampunk idea. I figured that the actual natural forms would be an interesting change of pace; I have already built a million boxy designs in SpaceClaim.

The Wing

From here I began with the wing. This was easily the most tedious part of the project. I traced somewhere between a lot and a ton of intricate little wing veins. I imported the image right into my design, and set the scale to be around 3 inches (it’s a BIG dragonfly). Using layout curves allowed me to switch back to 3D without forming surfaces. I organized the veins into four rough classes, by thickness, and gave each a layer (note the “layoutPlane” layer, used to hide the datum plane but not the curves). I could then set lineweights and colors to help visualize the wing structure early on.

Layers for Wing

I carefully traced every tiny vein in the wings using lines and arcs. It was around this time that Blake caught wind of what I was working on, and I think I nearly moved him to tears. While he may have been a little overdramatic, he did offer some good advice: too many picks in too short a time can lead to stress fractures (ask him about it). I took caution and paced myself, using the same process to create both the top and bottom wings, which would be mirrored in the final model. Here’s the general progression of the top wing:

At this point I had in the vicinity of 1000 curves drawn for each wing. It was unfeasible to create a cylinder or sweep for each curve by hand, but luckily Blake had just written an Add-in that did just that. His “Skeletize” tool allowed me to take the thousands of edges and create a solid skeleton from them (this functionality actually made its way into SpaceClaim proper, under the Cylinder tool). I broke the layout curves into smaller groups and projected them back into sketch curves, then went to 3D to create surfaces. SpaceClaim will only convert 200 sketch curves to surfaces in one go, but I wanted to have smaller surfaces to help with rendering later on anyway. After combining all the new solids I had two wings, each with one solid representing all of the veins and about eight surfaces forming the wing membrane.

Moving On – The Tail

With the easy but slow part done, it was time to dig into to the body, and I chose to start with the tail. Again, I went back to Wikipedia for a source image:

Side View of Tail

I blocked out the rough components very quickly using cylinders and spheres, just to get a sort of base to work with. I did some sketching where the primitives weren’t giving me enough, like the legs. This allowed me to structure my model, creating the sub-assemblies and layers I needed.

Moving into more detail, I began assembling the segments of the tail. I don’t really know the true physiology of dragonfly joints, so I took some liberties and simplified. I made simple slot-and-tabs with Center associations for each of the six segments.

Tail Joint Cross Section

I repeated this down the tail to the tip, which has some form of a pincer at the end. This I formed from some simple blends, then I applied similar assembly conditions as the existing segments.

To create some simple “veins” on the body, I chose to imprint the faces with intersecting datum planes, and then use the “Skeletize” tool again to create raised regions I could use the new Color Face commands on.

Slicing Up the Tail

Legs and Head and Body, Oh My!

I’ll come back to explain the process on creating the legs, head and body of the dragonfly, as well as assembling the whole thing later.

• Fixed the Archives to actually display past posts.
• Fixed the pagination links to actually fit the theme, and refined some of the locations they show up.
• Worked on showing multiple posts where they fit, and not where they don’t. I think I need to get Dusty to use the "<!--more -->" tag.
• Addressed some other minor styling issues.

The next thing to work out is the comment styling.  It looks a bit forgotten right now, because it sort of has been.

The class was broken down to teams of 3 or 4.  My group designed and constructed the gripper assembly, which had to hold the razor secure as it was dropped and then release it without perturbing it at the bottom.  I also worked on the fabrication of the chassis and electrical system.

Here’s the video showing the operation in action:

The first part shows the razor being positioned to a precise orientation.  It is then secured in the grip and lifted to the top of the drop track.  We had access to a high speed camera to get the footage at the end showing the razor dropping the last few inches without rotating or changing orientation.

It was one of the best courses I took at WPI.  We built something to solve an actual problem, from brainstorm to functioning device, in seven weeks.  Not to mention the task of managing that group to stay on task.  Hats off to Prof. Norton for the opportunity and mentoring.  Now if I can only remember some of that stuff over the next 7 weeks as I get ready for the FEs.

I’m not 100% convinced I like the blockquotes I came up with, but they are an improvement and functional.

Adding the social network links was simple EXCEPT for Facebook giving me a ridiculous run around.  It is pretty easy to come up with the URL linking to your public search profile; I found it on the Badges page.  What is more difficult to figure out is that my search listing was not activated, so I kept getting 404s on the link.  Once I finally found the damn checkbox buried in the privacy controls the whole thing worked fine.

I decided to use FeedBurner despite some recent hiccups with the service.  I’ve never had an issue with it, and the plug-ins are out there to use easily.  You can follow Jabberwocky Design’s feed here; I’m lumping everything together for the time being, but I might spllit into at least two feeds in the near future.  In addition I’m looking at Twitme to syndicate posts directly to Twitter.  This post will test that as well.

So with that, I think I can call this Vorpal 0.5.  I still need to fix the IE issues, but those should be quick to do, and IE is terrible anyways.  I’ve still got some big things to fix here, but I think things are on the mark as far as syndication and social-ness are concerned.

The goal is to have some significant improvements on the Vorpal theme by Sunday.  I list them here as a self-challenge to see how well I do:

1. Accommodate (at least partially) IE7 CSS-wise
2. Polish some design elements (lists, blockquotes, etc)
3. Setup social media linking (Twitter, FaceBook, etc)
4. Get the RSS working.

Not a small bit of work, but neither anything I shouldn’t be able to get done.  With these squared away I’d be a lot closer to having a “finished” theme here.

I added a contact form using a plugin written by my friend James, so thanks to him for that.

I’ve also started to style the comments, but that can prove a little hard to do when there aren’t any real comments to style (hint hint).