Creating a Guitar Stand from Scratch Using SOLIDWORKS, Part 1

By

One of my first projects as an intern in the DASSAULT SYSTEMES 3DEXPERIENCE Lab was to create a guitar stand for the Lava Drop X xDesign Edition electric guitar. This guitar was designed specifically for DASSAULT SYSTEMES, and was featured at SOLIDWORKS World 2019. The guitar’s designer, Rapolas Gražys, used the 3D Creator role on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform and utilized xDesign to design the instrument.

Upon receiving this assignment I was really excited to push my boundaries as a student engineer and hone my creative design skills.

My initial design intention was to create a unique guitar stand to compliment the unique design of the guitar itself. I researched existing unique and abstract guitar stands currently on the market, as well as sketching out different ideas I had in mind for the end result.

At this stage, I took to SOLIDWORKS to create and visualize a few of my ideas, and then picked my favorite one.

Once I decided which design I would go with, as seen in the photos above, I thought of ways to bring this stand into fruition. Part of why I chose this specific design was for ease of construction, as well as function and visual appearance. I decided to go with ½ inch plywood as my material of choice. I ended up splitting the larger sections of the stand into multiple sections to be able to fit within the build plate of the 3DEXPERIENCE Lab’s laser cutter

After laser cutting all the separate parts of the stand, I laid out all the pieces and used wood glue and clamps to connect them together, creating just two separate parts.

Upon creating this prototype I wasn’t fully happy with the end result. It wasn’t quite as tall as I wanted it to be, and adjustments needed to be made as a locking mechanism had been requested to be added to the stand. On top of all this, the overall fit and finish wasn’t quite up to par with what I wanted out of this project.

I ended up deciding to backtrack and overhaul my design, taking what I had learned from creating this prototype, and improving upon it. Check back soon for a part two update to see how I created the final version of this guitar stand.

Matthew Desrochers

Matthew DesRochers is a SOLIDWORKS Education Engineering Intern working in the Dassault Sytèmes 3DExperience Lab in Waltham. He is a Mechanical Engineering student at Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston. In his free time Matt enjoys working on his Volkswagen and screen printing.