Cessna 172 Skyhawk Model Airplane

Hello! My name is Mason Wolford and I am a junior at Jonathan Alder High School in Plain City, Ohio. In this project I wanted to create something that would help me in prove in my CAD design skills, and have a lasting decoration. I chose to make a Cessna 172 Skyhawk. I chose this plane because I like the way it looks and think it is a very practical plane. To make this plane, I used the CAD system SolidWorks, However you could use systems like Tinkercad or Fusion360.

• CAD Software
• 3D Printer
• Hot glue gun
• (Optional- Drill)

The The first step I took while doing this project was drawing the plane, and figuring out what scale to use. I wanted to make sure I had an almost perfect sketch of the scaled down plane so that I could go off that while designing. The scale I ended up going with was 1:24.

This step was the meat of the project. The 3D printer we have here at school can only print about a 4''X4'' area at one time. However, my plane is bigger than this area so I decided to make many different pieces that I would fit together like puzzle pieces in order to get my final product. I ended up having to model 20 different pieces.

This was the first of my designing. For this step, I drew a cross section of a wing and then extruded it out. I made 5 different pieces that all fit together to make one big wing that would sit on top my plane.

This step I knew would really be an important step to making this plane look right. What I did with this step was make shapes about every time the design would change. I then just lofted all these shapes together to make one 3D object. Once I had my 3D object I added fillets in order for the shape to be more smooth looking. I ended up making four different body parts that all fit together.

For this plane there are three back wings. One wing that sticks vertically in the air, and two others perpendicular to that one both sides. For these wings, I would just make a shape that looked like them. After that I would extrude them to the right thickness, and fillet them to make them flow better.

For this step, I needed to make something to where the wheels could sit on. I wanted to be able to have the wheels spin so I put a little tube coming out of my mounts that I could fit my wheel into. For the wheels, I made one big circle and extruded that. Following that, I made a smaller circle in the middle so that I could cut a whole that would fit in the tube.

This was the fun part of the project. I finally got to see my project come together after all my work designing it I ran into a little bit of a problem with the pieces fitting together. But after some troubleshooting I got it figured out and it all fit together perfectly.

This step, I first fit all the pieces together in order to make sure they fitting properly. I then put hot glue around the connecting pieces to fully secure them in place. However, I did not end up putting wholes under the plane for the wheel mounts to sit in. To fix this I took a drill and drilled wholes in order to make an easy fit.

Overall I thought this project was really good for me. It was fun and helped me get better at CAD. I hope these steps inspire you to star designing cool structures!