Reflection

Using Tinkercad, a 3D modeling platform, I created a small scale Bonsai tree. Bonsai trees have always fascinated me, and continue to do so. Typically, Bonsai trees take a lot of patience, and skill to grow, and I thought it would be a fun challenge to try and recreate one myself making use of 3D printing.

During this process, I learned how to use and operate Tinkercad. Tinkercad offers a variety of shapes of all kinds to create whatever you want with. I learned how to merge simple geometric shapes into organic elements, and how different shapes go together.

The 7 standards of the class are Empowered Learner, Digital Citizen, Knowledge Constructor, Innovative Designer, Computational Thinker, Creative Communicator, and Global Collaborator. My project most strongly ties into Empowered Learner because being an Empowered Learner is all about setting standards and adapting your learning environment to fit what you need, and using various technologies to do so. In this project, I was able to adapt to my materials in order to create what I needed.

A challenge I overcame on this project was trying to make the simple, geometric shapes I was given, into an organic element. This proved to be a real challenge, and I was only able to achieve this making the best out of what I had. I used the most sensible elements to create convincing foliage and other materials. But, I did indeed find out, that by warping the provided shapes, I could make them quite a lot more convincing.

Given a chance to do this again, I would change the size of the allowed workplane. In this project, we were only allowed a 3 - square inch cube to work with. I felt this was a bit too limiting, and would at least like to see this change to a 4 - square inch cube instead. But otherwise, there is absolutely nothing else I would like to change.

Hastings High School Career and Technical Education Program offers Agriculture, Business Management, Computer Programming, Construction Trades, Culinary Arts, Digital Multimedia, Engineering Design, Finance, Insurance, and Marketing. My project connects to the Engineering Design CTE program at Hastings High School. This would be because making things with 3D printing plays a very large role in Engineering Design. This project uses many similar techniques, and greatly ties into many things involved with Engineering Design. And well the result of this project may not tie into the subject quite as much, the process is similar.