Students, teachers work together in CAD+ Pilot Summer Program

This summer, Uni sponsored a CAD and 3D printing workshop organized by Art teacher Lisa Evans, and taught by Professor Cliff Shin. Seven students and faculty members participated in the workshop.

Students were given several activities to help them to cultivate an understanding of how to use SolidWorks to generate designs, KeyShot to render images of designs from SolidWorks, and Z-Suite to 3D print their SolidWorks designs. The camp lasted for two weeks, and each person was able to 3D print objects using what they learned.

On the first day, students were introduced to SolidWorks and were able to sketch and extrude to create their initials by the end of the lesson. On the second day, students practiced revolving and lofting, with which they were able to create bottles and used reverse engineering to replicate a bottle cleaner on the software. On the third day, students measured Lego bricks with calipers to recreate Legos on SolidWorks and then assemble them to build a Lego tree on the software. The day after that, camp members were introduced to rendering with KeyShot, with which they rendered photorealistic images of their Lego assemblies. They also designed objects of their own choice, to later 3D print, on SolidWorks. On the last day of the first week of the camp, members continued working on their designs and then 3D printed their designs using a software called Z-Suite. During the following week, students were given a project to use their CAD skills to replicate a mini juicer on SolidWorks through reverse engineering, and then to modify their juicer replication to make the design more efficient.

We got insight into the participants’ experience by asking them each some questions. 

Lisa Evans:

What was your favorite part of the camp?

Working with a group to learn the difficult software with teachers as well as Uni students.

How was your experience with 3D printing?

I was glad we got help from Professor Shin and the technical staff because it took a long time to print our very small little objects, but they came out well, though not as perfect as I thought they would.

What was the more useful thing you learned?

How to work with the [SolidWorks] to visualize something that can be printed in 3D.

What did you decide to 3D print beside the juicer?

I did a cup holder for my bike.

Joel Beesley:

What was your favorite part of the camp?

My favorite part was learning a new piece of software that was a struggle at the start, and accomplishing something I couldn’t do before.

How was your experience with 3D printing?

It was fun… one of the creations, my USB protector, actually doesn’t quite fit because the filament was bigger than predicted. [3D printing] was a learning lesson on how precise measurements have to be.

What was the more useful thing you learned?

I would say the most useful thing I learned was being a student again and going through the struggles of learning yet also seeing how the teacher taught and adapted his teaching style to the individuals — I like learning about the teacher’s teaching style.

Would you take this camp again?

Yeah, I would take the camp again. I thought it was fun having such brilliant students to work with. Students and teachers worked together which was fun… you can share your struggles and work together. The camp was very neat.

Craig Russell:

What was your favorite part of the camp?

I really liked playing around with the software.

How was your experience with 3D printing?

I thought it went pretty well — I have the objects that I printed in my office. The scaffolding was kind of hard to remove, so I had some trouble with that.

What was the more useful thing you learned?

I think for me the most useful thing was to use multiple software — we prepared the graphics in SolidWorks, then we imported them into KeyShot for rendering, then we had to put them into Z-Suite for 3D printing I like using the same files on different software. Playing with KeyShot was pretty fun.

Would you take this camp again?

Not if I did the same things because I wouldn’t grow very much from it, but I had a great experience and I would encourage my colleagues that are interested in art, design, technology or math to do it.

Dina Hashash:

What was your favorite part of the camp?

My favorite part was learning how to 3D print the CAD models once they were done in SolidWorks.

How was your experience with 3D printing?

I think it was pretty fun because… we could literally print anything we wanted.

What was the more useful thing you learned?

The most useful thing I learned was CAD itself because in this day and age everything thing is CADed before being put into production so if you are interested in going into something like design or manufacturing, CAD is pretty important.

Why did you come to this camp?

I came to this camp because I am part of a local robotics team and the team is currently in need of some CADers, and I thought this was a great way to expand on my CAD experience.

Jonathan Lau:

What was your favorite part of the camp?

I liked being able to create real-world objects in [SolidWorks]. It was pretty cool to look at my 3d printed object and know that I made it myself. I also liked rendering things in KeyShot because rendering designs made them look very real.

How was your experience with 3D printing?

When [my object] came out the parts didn’t completely fit together because my measurements were a millimeter off — I had to smash the parts together with my fist.

What was the more useful thing you learned?

How to use SolidWorks and to model objects using math and spatial thinking.

What was your favorite activity at the camp?

Probably the Lego activity — even though I had a hard time at the beginning and I didn’t do the proportions correctly, in the end, I managed to assemble Lego bricks together on SolidWorks and it turned out okay.

Betsy Ruckman:

What was your favorite part of the camp?

I really liked learning the new skill of CAD, especially when the teacher was so patient and the students were so willing to help each other out. The end result was fun, but the process of growing and learning, plus the access to such awesome facilities, was the best part for me.

How was your experience with 3D printing?

The 3D printing made me see its potential, but how far the technology still has to go. It made you think in a different way when you knew you had to print the object at the end. It made me want to print other stuff, definitely.

What was the more useful thing you learned?

I learned to take risks and try new approaches in the software and in my thinking. Multiple times, I got stuck on a construction aspect only to be shown a way simpler, innovative way around the problem by a classmate or by the professor. I really appreciated the ingenuity involved, even in such a high-tech class.

Why did you decide to attend this camp?

I like trying new things, and when I saw the advertisement for the class I wondered if Industrial Design might be something I’d like to do in the future during college or for a career. Whether I’d design juicers for a living or not is still up in the air, but I definitely want to use the skills I’ve learned in CAD and 3D printing in the future.

Professor Shin was able to give each camp member a good understanding of how to use various software to be able to create a final, physical product — from designing an object in SolidWorks to creating photorealistic images of the SolidWorks object in KeyShot, to importing their SolidWorks design to Z-Suite for 3D printing, and also to use graphic design skills to create a poster with rendered images from KeyShot. Each camp member learned a lot, and the camp is a great opportunity for those with an interest in things such as engineering, math, art, or science.