Modernized Lite Brite With Customizable Text and Designs

A very dear core memory of mine involves the late nights spent using my lite bright set with my family. Whether it was the unique luminous glow that brightened the dark room and our smiles or the endless creative freedom that allowed us to design whatever we put our minds to, my lite bright represented an integral part of my childhood. Although others may think the toy is outdated, lite bright will always remain a timeless, irreplaceable asset in our home that brought so much joy and for that reason I decided to use it as inspiration in this contest. To follow, I used my childhood memories to not only draw inspiration from but to capitalize on the minor aspects I would change when given the chance. With lite brite, the sky's the limit. One's options are endless as they are faced with a detail-oriented design that gives a new meaning to the phrase "blank canvas." In this personalized and modernized version I sought to incorporate many more holes with appropriate spacing in order to allow for limitless possibilities and give room for complex designs. In this new spin on lite brite, one can create unique, detailed, and aesthetically pleasing texts as well as designs in order to unleash their creativity.

• Autodesk Inventor
• Endless creativity and non-quitting spirit

For this step, I conducted research on various lite brite toy sets. I specifically centered my focus on my own lite brite set, of which I analyzed closely. In my head, I made a list of glows, or things I most valued about the set, versus grows, otherwise known as the changes I had hoped to incorporate in this new design.

After the brainstorming phase, I sought to collect accurate measurements of the different components of the lite brite. I conducted this process in person, with my own lite brite set, but also using the help of research and other online sources to ensure the smaller, more detailed measurements, remain correct and near-exact. I led such an in-depth measuring process in order for my model to be scaled accurately as well as for my model to look and behave structurally sound. In this case, 3D-printing possibilities can withstand.

Once the data collection is in order it was time to move on to the design process. For the peg, I wanted to make a few minor changes to certain features of my original toy set. More specifically, knowing that the small size of the peg made it impractical to pick up and firmly grasp, I sought to increase its total length. Additionally, I wanted the top component of the peg, the side that would remain visual once used, to be thicker, as I remember its narrow appearance made the design more difficult to come together. With these edits in mind, I began my modeling journey. I utilized the measurements of the length, width, diameter, and more to include in my design and sometimes build upon. Throughout the creation process, I used sketch to draw variously sized circles as well as extrude and loft commands to bring the whole design together and connect each sketch in a way that would resemble an improved version of the lite brite peg.

After I designed the lite brite peg, I moved on to creating the base of the lite brite. Going into this process, I already knew I wanted to drastically increase the amount of holes on the board in order to give people more creative freedom in their design and enhance the level of detail in their creations. With the edits and dimensions combined, I went about modeling the base using sketch to map out the rectangular shapes of the edges as well as the center of the board on top of the extrude and loft commands to bring my vision to life. After the foundation was finished and the base's outline was completed, I sought to use the diameter of the narrow side of the lite brite peg to create a very large number of holes. After the extrude process was over, nearly 2000 holes were created in order to truly improve the experience of the people using the lite brite while embracing detail.

With both of the key components, the lite brite peg and base, finished, it was now time to put the lite brite to use through assembly. First off, in order to differentiate each part of the lite brite, I color coded the pieces closely based on actual appearance. Although, I opted for all red pegs in the example designs above, one of my favorite aspects of this lite brite model is the endless creativity that doesn't only go into the design but goes into the coloring. The pegs in lite brite offer a diverse array of colors to bring great detail to one's creations, whether this is through shading, outlining, patterns, and more. In order to put the pegs into the corresponding holes on the board, you have to edit the relationships between the components through the constraint command. Once the audience brainstorms a design, whether it is text or an image, they can begin to orient the pegs on the board through constraint to bring it to life. Also, with this detailed modernized version of lite brite not only can people write out brightly colorful, creative messages but they can do so in an infinite number of unique fonts and images, including bubble letters, script, different text characters, emojis, or other designs that people come up with on their own and create in real time. With the example pictured above about 150 pegs spell out a centered common greeting "Hello", but with this lite brite model, anything is possible!