I talked with Samu and decided that I would render the pear ducks on Rhino and then towards the end use Grasshopper tesselations to engrave something onto the pear ducks. The engraving might be on the flat side of their bodies or somewhere on their wings. I was using the cage edit tool to make the pear duck body look more organic.

This is a slow moving process for me, I struggled very hard to work with Grasshopper and Rhino because I wanted to make sure I was including Grasshopper components but I felt like it would be easier to just render it on Rhino. Below you can see the beginnings of the stem of my pear ducks as a polar array of a plane. I was playing around with Grasshoper components trying to figure out how to make the stem into a solid 3D object.

To be honest, I did not get a whole lot done during this glass. I was planning on moving fowards with the plant people book holders (the sketch on the left under my original mood board). But then I started to think about typical plant holders and how they usually have a hole somewhere for the water to flow out. And, in order tro be an effective book stopper the back of the plant holder would have to be flat which would mean the back of the had would be flat. So instead, I consulted my friend Pinterest and did some more research to find inspiration. I decided that I wanted to commit to just book stoppers. A mini mood board is shown below along with a skethc of my idea. I want to combine the ducks idea with the pear book holder.

Challenges:

• Having a clear idea and plan that we could execute step by step 

• Getting some of our ideas to come to life when rendering 

• Trouble with computer processing of certain Rhino functions

• Prusa 3D printers malfunctioning  

Successes:

• We were able to get two good test prints printed -- even though neither of them fit perfectly 

• For me I was able to successfully follow a tutorial and test print (even though we didn't use it in the final product)

• I succeeded in making a backup design on Rhino in case the other one didn't work 

Test Print #2! This time we chose to use black PLA and made the frame of the glasses wider. We had a little bit of trouble at first with the filament; it came out in weird blobby chunks. I think it was because the printing bed overheated. But we stopped and restarted the print atn de are a little worried that it would be too big when the test print finished. So unfortunately one of our test prints is too big and one is too small. We also used the bandsaw to cut some acrylic to put into the frames as a lens.

Test print!! We ran into some trouble with one of the Prusa printers which is now, unfortunately, out of use. But we unloaded the filament from that printer and loaded it into another one and started our test print! It ended up being too small for our faces and there were some parts that could have been printed cleaner.  

Lucas and I worked on Boolean Differencing the illusion pattern that Adrianne had made into our glasses design. There was a lot of trial and error with offsetting, so at some point we had to simplify the design so that the computer could handle it. By the end of class we had a product that we were ready to print!

I was finally able to accomplish my idea! I used the Brep function within Grasshopper to help with the Boolean Difference function for the outer ring of the glasses (this was on a circle ring). Then after doing Boolean Difference I reshaped the ring to be more of an oval and put it back into the design for the lenses. I don't think we will be using this in our final product, but it was good problem solving and working with Rhino and Grasshopper for me. 

During this short class I was attempting to put the polar array onto the ring and then Boolean Difference it before stretching out the ring into an oval shape. I ran into some trouble with Boolean Difference toward the end of class. Meanwhile, Lucas was working on antoher possible desing, the test print can be seen on the right below. And Adrianne worked on finding a desing that we could Boolean Difference into the side of the glasses below.

Our test print came out okay. You can see in the photo that the first trough on the left has very little support. So, if we want to use this design as the side bar we would have to add thickness to the base. Lucas and I were also working on alterantive designs that we could use for our glasses. He was working on putting an engraved illusion pattern into the side bars. Meanwhile, I was experimenting with some frame options, one of which you can see below. I was trying to get the polar arrayed curve onto the outside most ring of the glasses frame.

Day 3, I finished up the tutorial I started last class. I made some modifications to the waves that were being extruded so it was less complex and therefore easier to test print. Then, I exported the extrusion as an Stl file and prepared our shape to be 3d printed. The green shape you see below is the general shape that we are going to experiment with for the sides of our sunglasses. Finally, we started to pring our test print!

Today, we continued to explore designs and start rendering the components of our sunglasses on Rhino using Grasshopper. I was working on a parametric illusion design, following a tutorial, that we are considering using for the sides of the sunglass frames. Meanwhile, Lucas and Adrianne were working on designs for the frames of the glasses. Below are images of the work I did last class.

My group members are Adrianne and Lucas and the post-it that we drew said "Illusion Pattern + Something Wearable". We all agreed that it would be cool to make glasses for this project and somehow incorporate the illusion into the glasses frames. We looked into it and are considering using a color-changing filament. We want to try and work in the metal and wood shop, and possibly the fabrication/jewelry shop as well. Below are some of the ideas I sketched out.

I thought this tutorial was really cool, it was interesting to see how Grasshopper was able to generate a topographical map of SF. I faced some challenges with the last few steps of this tutorial and was unable to get the map to scale down to a smaller size. I also couldn't find the "Mesh Surface" component on grasshopper, so I was unable to get to baking my geometry.

This tutorial had quite a few steps, I still enjoyed it though. I was surprised by how much you had to move the Neighbour points in order to dramatically change the Voronoi cells. I didn't really have any challenges with this tutorial.

The product of this tutorial looks so cool! I did run into a few challenges along the way making sure there were no errors with the components. But I was able to troubleshoot! 

I liked this tutorial! It was interesting to learn how to use the Brep component. I had a little bit of trouble with the "set one Brep" part of the Brep component. Otherwise, this tutorial was mostly challenge-free!  

This tutorial was very straightforward. It was a lot of fun to see how the sine simulation would change the appearance of the shape. It seemed like the shape of the sine function became the outside of the shape.  

I liked this tutorial because the designs that were created were very intricate. I didn't really have any complications with this tutorial, but there are many individual components that I'm curious to learn more about.

I fully understand the polar array component and how to use it. However, I still find the lot component a little confusing -- I'm not super sure what it does.  

This tutorial was longer compared to the other ones and it felt like a bit much information to take in. I didn't really have any challenges following the tutorial. It was fun to use grasshopper with more components. 

This tutorial was great! I found the Voronoi component very interesting. It was fun to play around with the sliders and see what changes it would make on the Rhino file. I didn't really have much trouble with this tutorial. 

I liked this tutorial, it was super quick and straightforward. Also, the tessellations look really cool and I could quickly come up with a unique design!!

I fully understand how to create a cylinder on Grasshopper that can be rendered in Rhino. I'm confused about some of the more roundabout ways to make a cylinder. I'm curious what the benefits of each method of making a cylinder are. 

Grasshopper is a fun and interesting platform that can be used to block code shapes into Rhino. I'm curious if it's more efficient to create a design through Grasshopper or just by hand on Rhino. I think Grasshopper will take me some time to get used to.

Final settings tree: 50% infill (20% for prototype), Hatchbox Black PLA, 0.2 mm quality

Final settings mushroom house: 50% infill (20% for prototype), Hatchbox Black PLA, 0.15 mm quality

Today we reprinted the press-fit tree on the Ultimaker because the first print didn't fit together as nicely as we wanted it to. We also tried printing a smaller version of our mushroom house, but upside down so that there would be fewer supports we had to dissolve after the print finished. Finally, we decided it would be a nice finishing touch to add a platform for our trees and mushroom houses. The top layer is translucent acrylic with a wood base underneath.

We had a successful test print of our mushroom house and decided to keep it as the final product. In order to use both printers, we decided to reprint our tree design using the Ultimaker. We switched the filament color on the Ultimaker and ran into a little bit of trouble. But after cleaning out the nozzle and making sure to select "Ultimaker PLA" as opposed to just "PLA" we were able to get printing!

We did a successful test print of the tree design on the Prusa printer and started a test print of the mushroom house. We changed the design of the little house to be more rounded and natural looking, with indents instead of extrusions. We used Simplify3D to set up the supports and will be seeing whether or not our print was successful during the next class.

We were able to plan out our press-fit tree on Rhino. We had some issues with boolean difference and figuring out how to make closed polysurfaces that worked the way we wanted them to, but managed to work through these issues. We also planned out our overhang object, which will be a small cabin to fit with the redwood tree theme.