Fusion 360 Modeled Pedestrian Bridge Project

My name is Mason Wolford, I am 18 year old senior at Jonathan Alder High School in Plain city, Ohio. I am designing this from a engineering independent study class. For this project I used Fusion 360 to make a pedestrian bridge that connects two sides of a river that we have in our community. This bridge will serve to connects the heart of our town to an up and coming neighborhood just across Big Darby Creek. Our community is quite small and tight nit. I wanted to incorporate this feeling into my bridge design. I have never used fusion 360 before but really fell in love with the learning process and felt like I picked it up quite fast.

While creating a design for this bridge, I really wanted to add as many features that James Devlin wanted as possible. But most importantly, I wanted to make this look like it belonged in Plain City. This bridge is going to bridge the gap between an exciting community and a brand new neighborhood. Moving to a new area can be scary, and I wanted to make the transition for these new Plain Citians a little easier.

This location is perfect to put a pedestrian bridge because there will be a lot of new foot traffic from people trying to get into town from the new neighborhood. If you take a look at my photo from google earth, the red circle is where my pedestrian bridge will be put. In blue is where construction is beginning on a neighborhood. And lastly in yellow, is downtown Plain City. In addition, my bridge will also be connected to an existing park that people will no longer struggle to get to.

Before I started to design I needed to research the specifics of pedestrian bridges. So the first thing I did was measure how long the creek was and research how much space you need on each bank to make a safe bridge. I found that the creek spanned 270ft across and you need 15ft on each bank. This concluded that my bridge should be 300ft wide. In addition, I found that a good pedestrian bridge is 8ft wide and 5ft deep.

Step 1: The Base

This part of the build took a little longer than expected because I've never used the software before. But after some trial and error I began to learn and get efficient. I used the measurements that I got from my research in step 3.

Step 2: Alder A

This was by far my favorite step. I first found a picture of an Alder A and then got all the dimensions and scaled it to perfectly fit on my bridge. I think this addition personalized the bridge the most and really made it look like a Plain City Bridge.

Step 3: Plain City

This step was thought out after I had all my A's on the bridge. After looking at it I decided it need more contrast. So for this I added Plain City into the railing. This step was a bit challenging because I individually design each letter, but it trained me to be very efficient with my sketches.

Step 4: Roof

I wanted to add a roof so that people walking through did not get effected by the weather. However, I still wanted people to feel like they were outside. So for this, I made a glass roof that is slanted so that rain will slide off.

Step 5: Lamp Post

The bridge needed light to be a safe place at night. While designing these I learned how to add materials and appearance to my design.

Step 6: Welcome sign

Last but not least, I added a welcome sign to further convey the message that the newcomers are welcome into our community.

I learned a ton from this project. First and foremost I learned how to use fusion 360. I also extended my knowledge on the design process. If I were to do this project again I would use my new knowledge in fusion 360 to make an even better design. I thought my design was good but I learned so many features throughout the build that would have helped me in the beginning. Lastly, I want to thank James Devlin and the Instructables team for putting this contest on.