{"id":43743,"date":"2020-03-11T08:00:30","date_gmt":"2020-03-11T12:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/solidworksblog\/?p=43743"},"modified":"2020-03-06T14:52:21","modified_gmt":"2020-03-06T19:52:21","slug":"cloud-based-cad-tools-make-design-easy-for-college-students","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/solidworksblog\/2020\/03\/cloud-based-cad-tools-make-design-easy-for-college-students.html","title":{"rendered":"Cloud-based CAD Tools Make Design Easy for College Students"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article is authored by student intern Isabel Thelen who worked in the 3D<\/strong>EXPERIENCE\u00ae lab in the summer of 2019 under the guidance of Mark Rushton, Product Portfolio Manager at Dassault Syst\u00e8mes SOLIDWORKS.<\/em><\/p>\n

When I was little, one of my favorite things to build were 3D wood puzzles of dinosaurs, animals, and vehicles. So, I figured: Why not design my own 3D puzzle and make it using the laser cutter? I opened 3D Creator\u2019s<\/a> xDesign app from my internet browser and started designing parts.<\/p>\n

It isn\u2019t easy to draw a dinosaur without a reference, so I downloaded an image of the pieces I needed for the puzzle and used the Insert Picture tool to bring it into 3D Creator. I then traced the image mostly using the Spline tool (due to the complex shape of the dinosaur bones). Luckily, I was able to make all my pieces in the same file, which saved me so much time!<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

After I had traced all my pieces, I wanted to make it an assembly within 3D Creator, so I would know how it fit together after I cut it out on the laser machine. Since I was able to make all my parts in one file, it was easy. I used the Lifecycle capabilities, built-in to 3D Creator, to add a revision before forming the assembly so I could toggle between the flat pieces and the assembly.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Making all my parts in the same file also made creating the drawing easier. Instead of many individual parts to make my drawings, I was able to create one drawing with all the pieces. To do this, I went to the 3D<\/strong>EXPERIENCE<\/a> Compass and clicked on Drawings, part of the Drafter Role.\u00a0 Once the drawing was complete, I exported it to a file that could be fed into the laser cutter.<\/p>\n

The next step was cutting out the pieces so I could put my dinosaur together. First, I had to make a choice: Did I want my dinosaur to be of wood, like the classic puzzles, or different colors of acrylic? I decided to go with white acrylic to mimic bones. The laser cutting took around 15 minutes on the Trotec<\/a> laser machine.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I popped all the pieces out with ease and started to make my dinosaur. That\u2019s when I ran into an issue. I made the slits too big, so the pieces weren\u2019t fitting together. I went back to 3D Creator and changed the dimensions on my sketches to a smaller measurement closer to the thickness of the acrylic. Everything updated when I switched back into Drafter, allowing a new file to be exported for the laser cutter.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

This time I used black acrylic for a slick look. I broke a couple of pieces as I assembled the dinosaur because acrylic is very brittle. Luckily, some of the white pieces fit where I had broken some parts, so I had a dinosaur skeleton model for my desk.<\/p>\n

I was very happy with how my dinosaur turned out, so I shared it in one of my communities on the 3D<\/strong>EXPERIENCE platform. Everyone enjoyed seeing what I had created and some people asked if I could make one for them. Please feel free to let me know what you think in the comments below.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Using SOLIDWORKS and the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, college interns experiment with design and manufacturing.<\/p>\n... Continued<\/a>","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":43740,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3044,2933,26,17,18],"tags":[40,3012,3080,3081,3079,19],"class_list":["post-43743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-3d-sculptor","category-3dexperience","category-customer-stories","category-education","category-solidworks","tag-3d-cad","tag-3d-creator","tag-cad-on-the-cloud","tag-cloud-based-cad-systems","tag-internship","tag-solidworks-2"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/solidworksblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/solidworksblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/solidworksblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/solidworksblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/solidworksblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/solidworksblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43743\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/solidworksblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/solidworksblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/solidworksblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/solidworksblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}