This is my major-piece-of-cake-assignment. We were given a PCB/internal chip set piece, and were supposed to model a shell around it, using the top down modeling technique. Which basically means we have to model all the separate parts in one assembly file, instead of what I’m used to doing, modeling all the parts separately then bring ‘em all into an assembly file and mate them together. With top down modeling you have a base part, which in this case is the PCB chip set and you basically model around it, so theres no need to do any assembly as the parts are bounded by layout sketches.
It’s also convenient as you are able to model all the parts in context so you don’t have to keep switching between files to check if the dimensions are right.
Model itself is pretty simple, the PCB chip set they gave us was fat and chunky so the device couldn’t be slim and sexy. The final product looks like a first gen iPod, its fat and chunky. And for those wondering Avante is the supposed company. It’s probably a mock company made up for purpose of this assignment.
While we’re sorta on the topic, I just oh so like to add in an opinion of my own. SolidWorks can’t render for fucks. Probably because it doesn’t have a rendering engine like say Pro-desktop. I highly doubt it’s developers are going to read this, but hey why not, for the convenience of us designers puh-lease add a rendering engine of some sort, so we can actually render the product, I don’t even mind if you rip-off Pro-desktop’s crappy rendering engine, just have one so we can render our products for presentation’s sake.
Oh one more thing, SolidWorks jpg exporting algorithms sucks like…too, seriously way too many jpg artifacts, which by todays standards just means they couldn’t careless and simply created a shoddy exporting algorithm.
Finally I’m sure the above mean nothing much to you all so why don’t you just enjoy the pictures below.
Filed under: Design, University
