Lab Assignment: Week 1

For this assignment, I chose to create a 3D design of my water bottle. I initially thought that this would be an easy first design to work with, but it proved to be harder than I thought.

I started off by using simple shapes to build the base of my design. This part was fairly easy after watching a few YouTube tutorials on how to create a hollow cylinder and add colors. I think initially the main difficulty I had was navigating the site without a mouse but after a while I began to get the hang of it.

After adding the simple shapes, I had to figure out how to smooth the edges of the lid in order to match my actual water bottle. I used the fillet modify tool to do this part. Using this tool was difficult even after watching the tutorial. I wasn’t able to figure out how to completely smooth one of the sides and no matter what I did it wasn’t working for me. I think after experimenting more with this tool I will eventually be able to figure it out. But I did have to compromise and leave it as is. Even with this small issue the design still looks accurate to my water bottle in real life because the cap is asymmetrical.

A tool that I wish I figured out sooner was the appearance tool because it helped me add color and material to my design. For example, I was able to add the blue color to the bottle and white to the cap. And although it’s not visible from the outside, I was able to add a stainless-steel looking material to the inside of the hollow cylinder. Not only did this tool help my design look more real to the actual thing, but it also helped me differentiate where the water bottle and cap meet.

Overall, I had fun messing around with the different features that the Fusion 360 tool comes with, and I am excited to experiment with more designs in the future.