Computer Aided Design - St Paul's Way Trust
On November 19th, PPL PWR were back at St Paul’s Way Trust for the Royal Academy of Engineering workshop series, with Josh, Kate, Lauren and Natacha leading a session on CAD modelling.
Students started by sharing their ideas from the previous week, a chance to refresh their presentation skills and go over any details that needed further development. Groups then broke their designs down into separate components, using Post-Its to speculate on the dimensions of each part and what it might be made of. The purpose of this exercise was to understand the feasibility of manufacture, as students moved between tables helping other teams decide which of their components were realistic to make themselves and which parts they might want to buy pre-assembled. The teams had some very helpful insights and displayed they really understood the importance of teamwork.
With their design priorities established, teams moved over to their SketchUp stations to have a go at making a 3D CAD model of their components using the skills they had developed a few before. Students were excited to see their designs taking shape in front of them, and even more excited to know that we would be bringing them the 3D-printed prototypes of their work next week! The wonderful journey from idea to tangible reality is reaching its final stages…