Introduction to engineering 

Name: Arsalaan Abbas

Class Period: 1B

Teacher: Stewart, Jace

Home campus: Wakeland High school 

Puzzle Cube

Assignment summary- The Puzzle Cube project was to design a puzzle cube with 5 pieces. The cube is designed to be a challenging ask for children to solve. The puzzle cube is a 3x3x3 inch cube that is comprised of small cubes glued together into 5 unique pieces. These pieces are put together to form the cube. 

What I learned- I learned a lot of things. First of all, I learned how to sand down wood. We had to sand put the wood to be able to make the pieces perfectly fit into each other. The second thing I learned was how to use fusion. We already knew about the program, but this was my first actual model that I needed to learn a lot about.  Overall, I learned a lot of the basic tools I still use to this day for modeling. 

Reflection-  I feel that if I could go back and tell myself some pointers, I would mostly tell myself to really put emphasis on the sanding down. This was very important because I did not sand them down all the way thinking it didn't matter. Because I did not focus too much on sanding, the final pieces where very rigid and they did not fit properly. 

IsoShapes

Assignment summary-  This assignment consisted of 2 shapes we had to model. These were very complex shapes with lots of holes and extrusions. There were holes that went all the way through, halfway through, and there where many different tools such as filet used to achieve the overall shape. 

What I learned- I learned how to do much more in fusion, we learned how to make different depth holes using many different tools. We also used the joint tool to combine the different shapes together. I found out how to cut out shapes out of one big piece, which is how I made the half holes. Overall we deepened out depth of how to do more advanced models with fusion 

Reflection- One thing I would tell myself before I started would be to not underestimate this project. I thought that it would be super easy and I did not have to worry about it. But before I knew it, I had only one cylinder modeled and I had so much to do in one day. the complexity of this project was a lot for me at the time and I wish I took it more seriously.  

Reverse engineering 

Assignment summary- In this project, the objective was to reverse engineer a pen. We modeled all the parts in fusion and combined them into a pen. The project was with a partner, and together we made individual parts. We combined them together and modeled a final pen. This assignment was the longest one by far, because we had to reverse engineer a pen and we had never done anything like that before. We had to experiment with different tools on fusion to make a good looking pen. 

What I learned- I learned a lot of important skills during this project. This was our first major partner project, so I had to communicate a lot which improved my communication skills. I also had to learn to respect other people's opinions, seeing as how we are not the same people working on one thing and will have different opinions. Overall, this project really deepened my teamwork skills and I think this was one of the most important ones because of that. 

Reflection- I think that for this project the only thing I would really have done differently would have been to communicate better. I remember that since this was out first project that required teamwork, my communication skills weren't really that good. We had a hard time asking each other for ideas and coming up with ideas together. I would make the same pieces as him, and it would be a lot less productive. in conclusion, we should have spoke to each other better to get the project done more efficiently. 

AUTOMATA box

Assignment summary- In the automata box project, we made a box with rotating cam views (pear cam, heart cam, snail cam ect.) that are used to move axels. these axles are used to move things on the box (ex action figures) in a path that matches the cam used on the axle. This project was by far the hardest out of these 4. It was hard to understand the concept of the cams and that made it hard to just understand the whole project in general. I feel like this project was also hard because we had to animate the movement of the axles with the different cams and there were a lot of moving parts. 

What I learned- I learned a lot about the different thing to do in fusion. By this I mean that we learned how to animate the exploded view of the box, which was something that I never had done before. This could help me in many projects to come if we need to see the parts breakdown of a model. the exploded animation can show all the components of a model and how they work together. 

Reflection- I would tell myself that its ok to ask for help. This is becuase when I was doing this I was very lost and overall did not know what we where doing. I tried to learn it on my own, but it did not work out. These were very advances topic to learn and I should always ask the teacher for help whenever I need it.