Digital Analog
15/4/2024 our new assignment is to use Rhino7 to create a 3D model. we are asked to create 3 iterations of our model by printing the out on 3A papers and folding them up into a shape. Rhino is something that i have heard of but never used it before, this would be a challenge for me but at the same time an opportunity for me to learn how to use a new app that i have ne\ver used before. i watched some youtube videos and tutorials that Fiona had given during class which definitely helped me have a basic understanding of using Rhino.
Practice Shape
After some tutorials from Fiona, I played around with some shapes on Rhino.
Combining Shapes
I have picked both the square and cylinder among the four shapes to intersect with each other for this project by putting 'BooleanUnion' in Rhino7. I place the cylinder in the direction and space of where I wanted it to get through the square shape by using the blue arrow to move my cylinder up and down, red to move it from left to right and blue curved line to rotate the shape around. Even though it was tricky at first figuring out which arrow I should be using to move the shape around but I managed to place it in the right placement at last with my square.
After I have combined those two shapes together and am happy with how it turned out on Rhino, I scaled the whole shape up by enlarging it so it will fit the scale of 300mm^3 box. I then typed in 'unroll' on the search bar where it flattens the whole model out into 2D shapes in order for me to print it our and glue them up. I find it really confusing once the model is being unrolled as I couldn't figure out how to glue them up together so I decided to to turn the labels on where we could so the numbers in the second and third pictures are shown helping to indicate which angle it matches with the model beside it.
First iteration
Once I have a basic understanding of my layout, I separated them into different pieces as I need to fit them into an A3 paper for printing them out. I drew some tabs beside my shape to help me stick my pieces up together when building my model.
This is the progress for my first attempt, using a normal piece of paper, I tried to build my model up and see how it goes. During the progress, I struggled sticking my cylinder shape as the tabs are too long, it was hard for me to connect them with the base where I had to cut them into half. I will have to make sure to change the size of the tabs on Rhino7 afterwards. Another issue was cutting curvy lines as I could not use a ruler to help me, I will have to find a way in order to perfection my cutting skills with curve lines in this project by either doing it slowly or finding a tool to help me.
This is what the model looks like for my first attempt using double sided tape as this is a rough draft and it would save up some time, I found out that I forgot to add tabs to one of the sides which ended up not able to connect them together. I will have to go back to Rhino7 and add the tabs back on the side. I figured that my cylinder shape could not connect with the square model as the hole on the square was too big to fit my cylinder model. This is another thing that I will have to fix on Rhino7. Overall, I am pretty impressed with how it turned out for the first attempt, even though it does not look good, at least I understand where I have to improve and fix on.
Second attempt
This is my new sketch on Rhino7 for sticking my second iteration up. As you can compare from the previous sketch, I changed the size of the tabs on the side of the cylinder shape and added more tabs where they are sticking to each other. I also added three tabs on one of the rectangles as I forgot on my previous one leading to the shape not being to stick together.
I decided to use a cardboard for my second iteration so I can have a basic understanding o how it would come together in order to make new changes for my final model. I decided to use double sided tape to not only save up some time but also easier for me to unroll everything out and restick them if I am not satisfied with how I stick them.
This is what my model turned out, I am pretty satisfied with it and will move on to my third one using glue instead of double tape. One thing I find it struggling is that I had to stick the papers that I printed out onto the cardboard in order to cut the layout out, I had to be careful when folding them when there are no lines and hints on the cardboard compared to using an normal paper. I also forgot to change the shape of the hole in the square which led to me having to do extra work by laying the base of the cylinder on top of the square paper and trace the layout out. I will have to change the shape of the circle on Rhino7.
Third attempt
The final changes I made was to fix the shape of the circle in the middel of the square. I just copied the size and the shape for the cylinder base and overlapped it on the square shape. I will try and stick the whole model up and see how it turned out.
This is my 3rd iteration, I am overall impressed with how it turned out compared to the other two it definitely looked way better. I used glue for this model and struggled to stick everything up as I spread glue all over multiple tabs at a time where I was rushing to glue every corner together before the glue dries. I will have to take it slowly and sticking my parts up step by step instead of rushing for my final.
Final model
Reflection
Throughout this project, I am pretty happy with how my final turned out at the end. I have learnt a new skill tin this class by using rhino7 and how to actually create a 3D model. I am very satisfied by seeing both the progress and result throughout this experiment as I start off struggling not knowing how to use Rhino7 and my first few attempts for my model looking really bad to understanding how to use the app and sticking my model up making it look decent and presentable.
I love how my model looked and how two different shapes is connected together. With one that has straight lines and one that has curvy lines combining to each other looks really cool. Cylinder is also slanted when inserting to the square shape which I think made the whole project looked more interesting as it has an angle.
To my surprise, I find using Rhino7 was actually easier than the arts and crafts part. At first, I thought that Rhino7 would be harder then the arts and craft, to my surprise, Rhino7 was actually really easy to learn and you could play around and figure out so many fun things to do with the app. Even though sticking my model up is very struggling for me as I wanted it look flawless, I managed to pull it together and build my final out which i am very proud of.
In the future, I definitely want to do more stuff with Rhino7 and explore new techniques in this app. I am looking forward to create more cool stuff on this app and see what I can make from Rhino7. Overall, I enjoyed this experiment this three to four weeks.
