A notable group project from IED (Intro to Engineering Design) was the reverse engineering assignment. Groups of two or more dismantled some type of device and would rebuild it in the CAD software, perfectly to scale. My group decided to break apart a common spray bottle.
After dismantling the device, I began to construct the trigger, spring, spring holder, and other smaller parts involved in the motion of the spray bottle. The rest of the group handled the head, spray cap, straw, and bottle.
Obviously, the trigger was the most difficult piece, aside from the head, and caused a number of problems. The first abnormality was the cut outs in its interior: they had to be angled, yet still push the spring holder towards the head to activate the device. In addition, every single piece had to fit together perfectly with virtually no room for error; the spring holder had to fit in the trigger, the spring had to fit the spring holder, and every piece revolved around another. To achieve such precision, digital calipers were the most useful and basically only measuring tool we had at our disposal that actually benefited the project.
However, eventually, the assembly worked and all pieces fit together perfectly. Aside from some glitches in the program that prevented some dimension lines and axes from being hidden, the final product was a surprisingly accurate recreation.
My personal favorite engineering project I completed at Severna Park High: the essence of the assignment was to create a chess set with a group with an overarching theme. Each group member would produce a three dimensional model of a bureaucratic building in D.C. in a 3D CAD Modeling program called Autodesk Inventor. It was decided that I would create the King Piece and model it after the Capitol building as I had the most experience with Autodesk Inventor at the time.
One of the important constraints of this project was the necessity of parametrics. In short, special dimensions were inputted rather than a numerical value. Every single dimension had to be either divided or multiplied off of dimension 0 (as seen in the very last panel) which had a value. This severely slowed the process as calculations had to be made, interrupting the work flow. It was also difficult figuring out how to use the circular pattern tool for the pillars in the dome while maintaining this parametric format.
Another important feature is the derived base. In summary, it is considered a separate model from the capitol building itself as the course instructor supplied our group with it since we were short a group member. It simply means this is technically a two piece product with a single Orthographic drawing.
The final point I would like to speak on is actually the technical drawing/orthographic or the IDW as it is often called in the course. It was our second wholly serious drawing but would certainly be the most complicated I would have to tackle in the course due to the excessive amount of supplemental views like detailed and section views. The course stressed Datum dimensioning and effectively stressed the importance of excellent technical drawings. It should be added that the piece seriously is drawn to scale in regards to where each section of the building begins and how far apart each pillar is and their size.
Aside from the general inaccuracy of the appearance of the piece, the chess piece was an extremely challenging but enlightening experience. It allowed me to experiment with the versatility of a couple specific tools allotted by the program that I did not have the opportunity to do so otherwise.
