Engineering Drawings and Custom Appearances

I went over my Lego Man last night and changed the appearance to make it look much more to my liking. I wanted him to look like he was in a soccer strip, which led to the idea of putting decals on his front and back for a soccer teams logo. The picture below was my first screenshot of my fully completed and assembled model which was a great feeling!

The technical drawings were a bit of a challenge, just making sure everything was fully dimensioned and I had enough and the right amount of views to communicate the model. I accidentally went on a bit of a roll with my Top Part Assembly Drawing and dimensioned the entire body piece of the Lego Man, which I was very proud of until I realised that I wasn't supposed to fully dimension that part! I saved it anyway and included it in my ZIP file along with the proper drawing with just minimal dimensions on there. 

Lego Man Accessory - The Life and Times

I finally settled on and finished my accessory today, I decided to can the idea of a bowling alley and work on a weight set. I modelled a bench press bar with a '10KG' and '20KG' weight discs that can slot onto the arm. The bar looked pretty simple so I put a series of small circles on the part of the bar for grip. It took me a while to figure out to add this patter all over the cylinder shape. However, I used a liner pattern first to copy the first extruded circle along the length of the bar. Then, I used a circular pattern where I selected the first liner pattern feature to wrap around the cylinder.

I didn't want it to look like just a standard weights disc so I added my own little colour scheme and look to it.

The Arm

I finally finished the Lego Man's arm to a standard I'm reasonably happy with. Which took a lot longer than I would have liked!! The biggest issues I had came from the fact that it is a very organic shape and was difficult to model. I used mostly revolves and lofts to make the shape. All in all I think visually it looks accurate however the dimensions could be a tad off. From doing this part I learn how to create a new plane on an angle, which I think will come in handy in the future. I also got to practice mirroring parts.

Lego Man Tweaking and Accessory Concept

This week I mainly focused on the finer details of the Lego Man, trying to make it as authentic as possible. The biggest challenge I had was creating the inside of the body part. Measuring the depth of its internal parts with my vernier was extremely important for accuracy. I was pretty happy with how this turned out, however, I basically had to take an educated guess of the radii on the inside.

For my accessory I was leaning towards creating a Batman costume for my Lego Man but I didn't think it had enough originality. So now I am working on a bowling alley/ pins/ bowling ball, but sizing is an issue as I obviously cant be too big for the #D printer. If it turns out to be too big to print I might still finish it just as a CAD model, then work on something a bit simpler to print like a weights set or something of that sort.

Glass Bottle & Lego Man

The bottle was a bit more challenging than I thought it would be to be honest. My plan of attack was to sketch half of the bottles profile then do a 360 degree revolve. However, the main issue I came across was the actual revolve itself. For some reason I could only get my sketch fully defined if I mirrored it. But! When I tried to revolve the entire sketch mirrored it forced an error. Which got pretty f***ing fustraiting! :) Im still working on this issue, trying to get the revolve to work properly while still being fully defined.

For the Lego Man part of the assignment I'm using a pretty awesome Star Wars figure. Which means nothing but it's pretty cool! I smashed out the head, legs, waist and hands pretty quickly and to a standard I was very happy with. I have started and completed the exterior of the body of the Lego Man, however, the inside seems to be the most difficult part to model. I'll have to spend some extra time on this I think.

Overall at this point I'm happy with the progress I've made so far and hope to have the bottle and Lego Man 100% finished so I can start to work on my own part to 3D print! :)