Paper Forms Project

For this project, I made a 3D pentagon. I initially had ambitions to make a shooting star, with a star as the base and then more triangles folding upward to meet at a point. I came up with idea because I had seen a lot of polygons or rectangles and wanted to create something different. However, after completing a design in Fusion 360, we realized in office hours that it would be too complex to make my vision into a 2D net. As a result, I thought it would be best to revert to a basic design from the reading.

I used Fusion 360 to create the 2D net on my laptop, I used UCSB's laser cutter, and yellow card stock. I also used rulers, tape, and a X-acto knife to transform my 2D net into a 3D object.

The reading on structural packaging was super interesting and definitely helped me understand the basics. But looking back, I wonder if the reading gave me too much confidence, leading me to create a design that was too complex. I think the most informative part of the reading was the section on the T X patterns to understand where the tabs would go and which edges would meet. Additionally, visualizing the the angles of the tabs made me understand this concept better. However, I was still confused on how one would correctly align the edge sizes and angles of the tabs. Overall, the reading helped me grasp the ideas behind this assignment and enlighten me on what was expected.

To begin, I sketched my ideas into a notebook. With my original star idea, I drew a base and then points to that came to meet. I thought all I needed for the design was for one triangle to come off of the triangles of the star like the small sketch in the top left corner. However, like shown in the bottom left, there would need to be two triangles (I didn't realize this until now).

Fusion proved to be a little difficult at first, but I slowly got the hang of it. My first struggle was not being able to adjust the edges of the triangle and I later learned that it was because the shape was over-constrained. After some time, I was able to use parameters for the edge lengths and the sketch dimensions to make the angles the same and I had completed a star. But then, like mentioned above, we realize that it would take more than one triangle jutting out (pictured above). Adding another triangle on the other sides would cause lines to overlap. So, an option would have been to make shapes stack on each other and ascend upward getting smaller and smaller. After that discovery, I decided to make something more simple that wouldn't hurt my brain.

Torn between wanting to do something creative and innovative, but also something simple and achievable I went back to the class reading. After going through some of the designs, I decided to design a simple pentagon. Now that I was well versed in operating Fusion 360, I was able to make up a 2D net of a pentagon in about 30 minutes. I decided to add a very small locking tab to add some sort of complexity.

When it came to cutting and assembling, I did a poor job at documenting this process. I had accidentally booked the laser cutter for next week. Thankfully I showed up early to be trained and luckily they could squeeze me in between people. However, I had about 5-7 min to upload my file and get it printed. Because of this I was a bit flustered and totally blanked on taking photos of my process. However, lesson learned!! From now on I will make sure to book the right time and leave plenty of leeway. I will also remember to take photos at every step. Overall, the process of using the laser cutter went smoothly. After the shape was cut out, I took a ruler and pencil to mark the lines where I would make creases. Afterwards, I taped the inside of the shape and made a little slit with a X-acto knife to use the mini locking tab.

Overall, I am very satisfied with my design. Although my final design is much different from my original goal, I learned a lot from the process. I learned that I should start with the basics before getting too complicated. I also learned that I should really take time in thinking about the practicalities of my design on paper and in my head before jumping right into digital fabrication.

I am happy that the locking tab worked well. I do wish I took some extra time to put my design in Adobe and mark score lines, however I forgot that we get Adobe for free in the Maker Space. If I were to do this project again, I would either add score lines to make the final product look much cleaner or I would I challenge myself a little more and create tabs, similar to those in the reading, so that there are no small gaps in the edges.