11/11 Wednesday - Adobe Illustrator

Today, we spent the entire class working on our class sculpture shapes. However, we did not use AutoCAD to do this. We used a new software, Adobe Illustrator. We learned how to use this software by exploring our options. Our task for the day was to finish drawing our shapes on Adobe Illustrator so that we can print our shapes and get closer to finishing the actual project. It was decided that we would use Adobe Illustrator instead of AutoCAD to fix the scaling problem that many of us faced during a previous class.

Homework that is due next class: Finish drawing your shape on Adobe Illustrator.

Here are some photos from today's class:

This is an example image of what we did today using Adobe Illustrator.

11/5

In class, we worked on printing out our cardboard shapes.  These shapes were all similar, because we had all started with the same shape, and changed parts of it to make it an individual one.  Most of us had a hard time figuring out how to scale our shapes so that it would be 30 cm long.  In most cases, our shapes were at least 80,000 cm long, which was too big to fit onto the cardboard.  After printing out the shapes, some groups realized that their slots were not the thickness of the cardboard, so it would be hard to fit the shapes together.  They also said that some of them had too many slots, making their whole shape easily breakable.  The homework for next class is to get our shapes to exactly 30 cm so we can print it out onto one piece of cardboard.

10/28

In this class we worked on hacking the class shape and our projects. Mr. Neile looked over our sheets of paper with our drawing, materials, and procedure list. He sat down with us one at a time and gave his personal feedback on our direction we are going. We also had to keep track of our gantt chart. We were assigned two pieces of homework: 1. We need to fix our sheet of paper that was handed back 2. We need to checkmark our gantt chart to make sure we are on track to finish.

10/30

Today in class, we learned how to use the Arduino's. Many of our class members had never used arduino's while others have had a little experience with it last class. Our class faced challenges such as programming the gemma which is the device that stores the information and details on what to do. Thus, everyone had to research about how to fix their problems and how to use an arduino. Our class was split into four groupsand two of the groups worked on how to use arduino's and neopixels which are wearable lights while the other two groups worked on creating a "Blink Pattern" with a LED light and the arduino.  However, in the end all of the groups were able to figure out how to solve their problem and were successful.

10/26

Today, we wrote down about our project on a worksheet and started researching and working on our project. We had to sketch what are project would look like and then write down the steps towards our goal.

10/22

Today, we chose to work on one of the four things on the picture below.

The first one was hacking the shape for our class project. 

The second and third one was to start playing around with the arduino hardware and software, for both individual and class project.

The fourth one was to start the preparation for our individual project.

10/16

Today in class we got to find out what shape we are going to be using for our collaborative project. We all brainstormed ideas for what electronics we might want to use on the shape, where we might want to put it and the circuitry. Towards the end of class we also got to find out more about our individual projects and watched some videos about the different tools and topics we can use and focus on. Such as arduinos, milling, neopixels, etc.

Homework: To make a blog post for this week

10/08

Today in class we began printing our final designs for our shapes using the laser cutter. Many groups had challenges because the format of their drawings did not match the layout when using the laser cutter. In addition to that, many groups could not get an appropriate size for their shapes and instead the laser cutter printed all sorts of different sizes. At the end of class, we did a show and tell of our shapes and described the features of it. All the while, our classmates gave critical feedback and comments regarding our shapes. 

10/6

Today in class we took our shapes we cut out with the laser cutter and got comments from the class. Then we got together in class and consolidated the positive features of a versatile building piece. Using our computers we were given a choice to fix or create a new shape that fits out groups wants. The homework is to make a new piece and have it ready by next class. good features include slots, ample surface area aswell.

Masa Kawasaki

10/1

      Today, we continued to use the laser cutter to have our personal shapes to present to the class.
The purpose of this is to have each and everyone of us have a unique shape that has both advantages and disadvantages. When we look at the positives and negatives of a design, we end up coming with a better, more useful figure.


Using the laser cutters and seeing how they function is also very interesting, it is a technology that we are not completely used to.

9/30

Today we had to finalize the our designs for the big sculpture of something. We had to make sure everything was right. The scale had to be in centimeters and we had to move our design into a windows computer to print out our design. Also the lines inside the design had to be erased or else the laser cutter will cut out the lines. We could make holes inside our design, but unneeded lines had to be erased. We used a laser cutter to print out the design. We used one plane of the cardboard box to have the laser cutter cut through.

9/28

Today we played around with the AutoCAD software which we need to use for our big statue that we are going to make with one piece. This software is linked to the laser cutter that we are going to use to cut the pieces for the statue and CAD means Computer Aided Drawing. Mr. Neale taught us the basic tools in AutoCAD and using those tools we needed to create a cylinder. We also needed to use the array tool because we may use it a lot for our next project.

AutoCAD home screen

Playing around with some tools

Cylinder

Array

HW: Create a shape for a test round next class

9/24

In todays class we firstly talked about our last project, which was the soft circuit LED light design project, and we talked about how we could make it better and what the steps were to making the project. We then moved onto the continuation of our designing of our next project. We all worked on what type of shape we wanted to make the next project and every group came up with different ideas and next class we are going to vote on one to use.

HW: weekly blog