Damla's Design Docs

This tumblr page is where I document my design documents.

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Week 4: Learning Rhino 

This week we were told to get in teams of three and learn to use different tools in Rhino. I was in the red team which meant the topics assigned to me were:

• Lines, polylines, curves, circles, arcs, rectangles, polygons 

• Control points 

• Find out how to create objects to the exact size and orientation you want

 • Find out how to draw accurately using drawing aids such as object snaps and ortho

Also, everyone was supposed to learn the following regardless of which group they were in:

Interface

 Get yourself familiar with all of the main elements of the Rhino interface including:

 • Viewports

 • Command line

 • Command history

 • Menu bar

 • Toolbar groups / tabs • Panel tabs

 • Sidebar

 • Status bar Navigation and appearance Make sure you know how to get around and control your view.

 • Make a viewport active

 • Maximise and minimise a viewport 

• Pan & zoom within a given viewport

 • Control the viewport display modes

 Command entry

 There are multiple methods for entering a command in Rhino. Familiarise yourself with what these are, then how to: 

• Repeat a previous command 

• Escape from a command

 • Undo an action

Unfortunately, due to being very ill I couldn’t come in to class this week which meant I had to learn all of these skills at home. This was quite tricky since we were all figuring out how to use this brand new software system and all I had were my online resources. I am the type of person who best thrives when working along with people around me. So I really struggled to keep up this week.

My struggles:

Rhino kept crashing

understanding my skill levels in comparison to other students. I thought the preparation I did for this week and the following week was enough but when I went into class I felt overwhelmed and underprepared.

understanding whether I had to submit a special consideration or not. I thought the quiz in the studio was more serious than it actually was.

understanding how to do the little rectangle thing on the bottom left corner. I didn’t understand how it was supposed to be parallel to line right next to it

What I learnt:

using the fillet tool

assigning a radius 

going through the steps of the exercise so that I could construct the shape. I usually start from the detailed parts and then move on to the big shapes but when I read Dorcas' blog post I understood that was quite wrong.  Going through the steps in the correct order saves SOO much time!

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Week 11: It’s the final count down

This week’s exercise was to take photos of one of the projects we made for our studio lesson and a product that we liked a lot. We were to take 4 photos for each product in different lighting environments and edit them using the knowledge we acquired in the previous communications exercises and the pre-class Lynda videos we watched.

The different photo setups:

• Setup 1: interior studio setup - 1 light 

• Setup 2: interior studio setup - 2 lights

 • Setup 3: exterior - open shade

 • Setup 4: exterior direct light with diffusion 

My experience:

I found this exercise to be quite helpful. I have previously played around with product photography when I released an apparel line on a website called Threadless and I needed better photos to put up. But because at that time I didn’t have much technical experience my photos didn’t turn out the way I wanted. With this exercise, we got to play around with outdoor and indoor lighting and really observe how that changed the quality of the photo. 

We also got to work with lights that we could move around so that dramatically changed the quality of the photos we took with my group. In most instances, I observed that light coming from the ceiling was not helpful at all so having the strong lights we could move around really elevated our photos. 

After finishing up with the shoot, I started retouching bits of the whiteboard (in the photos) that was imperfect on photoshop using the lasso and spot healing tool. I started off by creating paths and layers but by the end of it, I figured that was really unnecessary as the adjustments I was making were not major.

Then I moved on to camera raw cc to really perfect the photos I took when I remembered that there was a really quick and helpful tutorial I watched on Lynda. “Bringing it all together: from meh to wow!” by Julieanne Kost is a video tutorial that summarises the many skills taught throughout the three chapters. When you follow along, making little changes more suited to the photo YOU are editing, the end product is quite spectacular.

When I finished up, I ended up with some photos that I really enjoy. Which makes me proud.

On the course in general:

At the beginning of the course, I didn’t quite know what to expect. I read the course outline but I didn’t understand the scope of what we were to do until we were a few weeks in. At that point, everything seems very tedious and technical which I didn’t appreciate. I practised visual arts for three years before coming to university and I thought the process of production would be similar. This course proved me wrong. I felt out of place and uninspired throughout the first half of this course if I’m being honest. 

When we started making InDesign collages and product renderings my attitude about the whole class changed. I started to get really excited about working through the projects and I found inspiration to get to the end of exercises. So even though it was challenging at times to get to the end of some parts of the course, in the end, I began to value the process we were told to walk through.

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Week 10: Dora the Explorer with a camera

Week 10 we all got to have a bit of fun with photography and photo editing. We went on a one and a half hour walk around the campus to take photos that encapsulated autumn in the UNSW campus. The aim was to observe our surroundings and focus on elements of photography to get good shots to edit in adobe bridge and camera raw. 

In the lecture, Rob talked about what makes a photo go from cool to breath-taking. He told us that it is impressive when a photo can convey a narrative by using its subjects and the surrounding environment. When I was walking around, I tried to find that narrative. 

The four things we were told to capture were:

The built environment,

nature,

a portrait,

Details

and other than that we were to capture moments we found interesting. 

I’ve been taking photos of my surroundings for quite some time so I have a distinct taste in what I like to see in photos. I’m drawn to detailed photos of nature, photos that convey a mood and reflective surfaces. While I was walking around, without noticing I was drawn to these elements. 

When we came back to the studio to edit the photos,  I thought this portion of the exercise was going to resemble the other studio exercises where I struggled and didn’t enjoy myself all that much. But contrarily, since I often edit photos on my phone for fun, I went through this exercise quite smoothly. I didn’t even feel like I was doing this for a class; I simply felt like I was retouching photos I took while cruising around the campus with some friends. 

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Week 8&9: Hairdryer Rendering Exercise 

This exercise was meant to acquaint us with adobe photoshop’s rendering tools so we felt comfortable in our ability to complete project 2 in the following weeks. Since week 9’s class was on Easter Friday we needed to cover a lot of ground a lot quicker than we used to. Therefore we were assigned to watch many tutorials on how this software works before coming to class. Also, this week our exercise brief was much lengthier than previous weeks to walk us through each and every step of the process. The exercise was to render a hairdryer using the sketches provided on Moodle. We were also told to incorporate texture in the air inlet. 

Things I struggled with:

Arranging the layers in the correct order ( This took me a while to figure out. I kept painting and painting and nothing showed up and the simplest adjustment came to make a big difference in the end),

Deleting the mask on the colour fill,

My computer’s scratch disks being full,

Making straight lines with the highlights,

Making the masks (at first, I struggled and then I got the hang of it).

Things I learnt:

Incorporating texture,

Shading in photoshop,

Making an Led display,

The difference the hardness adjuster makes,

Working with lighter opacities to get just the effect that I desired,

Lining up paths ( I learnt this from the mistakes I made on the buttons and handle hole), 

And so many more photoshop skills that it would take another page to list them. I’ll just say that the skills I learnt while completing this were essential in my project 2 submission. I was frustrated at times with photoshop but this task was one of the few that I ended up really enjoying. I look forward to learning more on photoshop because the things I learnt have already opened up my eyes a lot.

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Project 2 Biodegradable Grill Rendering

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Week 7 Drawing DDDRILLS

This week’s studio exercise was much more relaxed than any other week and I loved it. We did some freehand drawing exercises to build our natural drawing skills. One thing I would like to say is that I feel as if this lesson in basic drawing skills came in a bit late in the semester. We did so many complex exercises that I feel would have been made simpler if we had at least done something like this before them.

The process:

We first started drawing straight lines that were 10 mm apart. 

Then we moved on to drawing circles with a diameter of 10 mm that were 10 mm apart from each other. We made as many rows as we could fit into the page. 

We moved on to drawing smaller circles touching four points of the previous circles we drew. 

We repeated that last step once more until we started turning our circles into spheres by drawing tiny ellipses and contour lines.

Next, our tutor got us to draw a coin from different perspectives. So the first step was always drawing it as a line with a certain thickness, then a tight ellipse and step by step turning that into a circle.

We moved on to drawing rectangles and cylinders in perspective and combining them with oddly shaped tubes. We shaded these shapes with darker pencils.

Lastly, we did a 5-minute sketch of a water bottle of our choice. We got to shade, sign and name it. We also put a rectangle behind our design so it stood out. If our bottle’s lid flipped, popped or twisted we drew a motion that indicated that. 

All in all,

 I think this exercise was quite fun even though I didn’t excel at it. I think my water bottle was quite creative since I had already designed a water bottle on a rendering programme. 

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WEEK 6 PERSPECTIVE DRAWING

This exercise was meant to teach us about two-point perspective drawing. The object we were supposed to draw was the Wassily Chair by Marcel Breuer.  I found this exercise much easier than the previous ones. For some reason, I felt as if I was in familiar territory.

We were to recreate the frame structure, that we were given images of on Moodle. This was so that we knew to put in the right measurements and make it look more professional than a quick hand-drawn sketch. Messy drawings can lead to misconceptions and lead people to believe the measurements are different than what they actually are.

Things I struggled with:

Figuring out the angles at which I needed to draw the vanishing points from

Fitting the vanishing points into the page, as you can see :)

Identifying my true vanishing point. I mistook the lines going up from the SP to the PP as my vanishing point. That made the rectangle look more isometric than it should have. So thankfully the problem was immediately identified by one of the tutors. I quickly adjusted to the true vanishing point and it was smooth sailing from that point forward. 

Proportionally drawing the chair itself. As you can see the many ins and outs of the chair are like knots waiting to be untied. That made it hard for me to identify the proportions of some of the metal rods.

The things I excelled at:

Asking as many questions as I pleased. I got used to asking questions while completing project 1 so I felt more at ease in the classroom.

Finishing within class time. I finished the drawings of the rectangle in class time which made me feel super accomplished since last week I barely started the exercise on Friday.  

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PROJECT 1- HAMMER TOOL 

This project was assigned to us so we could have a broad understanding of the CAD programme Rhino. We were to create a 2D technical drawing of a hand tool of our choice. The minimum amount of views we had to display was 4; at least one of them had to be either

a cross-sectional view

an enlarged detail view

or an auxiliary view.

I chose to do the top, front, left side and enlarged detail view as I felt those were more manageable for my skillset. Another requirement of this task was that we had to complete the drawing with a title block, a border, an optional zoning chart, and 10 thoughtfully placed dimensions. 

The submission was to be sent via the university ’s online Moodle system in PDF format. The due date was Thursday of week 6 and we had 3 weeks to complete it. We had a week 5 checkpoint in which we submitted the handmade version of our drawing. This was so that we remained on track and we at least had one component out of our hair before the final submission. 

My experience: 

I feel like I learned a lot about Rhino and about myself while completing this task. I have been having difficulties juggling the 3 courses workloads. This submission was one of the times it hit me really hard in the face that I wasn’t doing a good job at managing my time. I started the handmade portion of the submission in the middle of week 5 which is quite late, to be honest. The hours I put into that portion were not as many as I hoped I would. That’s why the penmanship is a bit sloppy. But I did learn how to properly draw tools with curves so that’s good.  

After feeling embarrassed about that submission I tried to make sure I actually mastered Rhino good enough to complete the task so I dedicated all of my weekend to do just that. I had never worked with any type of digital technical drawing programme before which was, in my opinion, a fact that held me back. But I must admit that the dedicated hours spent that weekend came a bit late. 

That week I spent around 35 hours tirelessly trying to whip out a CAD that was presentable enough to be submitted. I took advantage of the 24/7 space generously provided by the Squarehouse. I bought a mouse so I could move my drawing with ease. I resolved my ever so fragile Rhino 5 (Mac) that kept on crashing throughout the weeks. I reached out to a good friend to accompany me while I was working so I could ask my questions to her while I was quickly running out of time. 

My CAD process:

When I started the front view, I made the decision that the right side view I included in my hand-drawn technical drawing was obsolete so I deleted it.

The curve, point, line, and offset were my most commonly used tools. 

I ran into Maks while I was working in the Squarehouse and with Paris, they taught me how to use construction lines by simply putting those lines on another layer and changing the color. 

To complete the head of my hammer on the left side view, I wanted to first complete the top view so I could transfer some of the measurements from there. But some measurements were simply not lining up. That’s why I did it the other way around which worked out pretty well. 

Paris helped me change the size of the grid so that I could fit all of my drawing on there.

I started off my front view on the origin thus completing that was much easier than the other views. The amount of calculation that I did for the left side was wild. 

To save some time, instead of drawing the same thing twice without giving any more information I scaled up a portion of my left side view for my detailed view. I didn’t choose to do a cross-sectional because it wouldn’t add anything to the drawing. 

I also didn’t draw the tiny dots on the handle because it didn’t add anything to the drawing. 

I had difficulties figuring out how to print the PDF. They showed us how to do it in class and I listened but I still found it hard to replicate. At the end that is what made my submission late and really held me back.

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Week 5 Studio Exercise :

Introduction:

In this exercise, we were supposed to produce three views of a pivot bearing; Top view

Front view 

Full Section Side View.

We were to fully dimension the drawing, add a title block and hatch where necessary. 

My experience:

For some reason, I thought that the class would be with pen and paper but I soon discovered that it was not. I didn’t want to just sit around and dwell on my mistake so instead, within the class time I rushed home to grab my laptop. I wanted to learn interactively and not have to complete the task at home by myself.  Although my best efforts I really couldn’t use the class time effectively at all. 

At home, I ran into a number of complications with Rhino. It kept crashing and I couldn’t figure out how to authenticate my license. Finally when I got Rhino to start up again and watched a few youtube videos I was able to produce a subpar front view within 5 hours. I know this is far from qualifying for an end result but I am still semi-proud of myself. I missed the class where everyone figured out the Rhino in groups last week but I still learned some functions. 

Things I struggled with:

Mirroring function

placing the lines in the right places

the size of the semi-circle on the left

completing the exercise within the class time

fitting all the views on one plane ( I think for this exercise I could have updated it to a larger template)

Things to improve on next week:

asking for help more often

using construction lines

completing all views of an object *facepalms*

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Week 3 Studio Tutorial – Section and Auxiliary Views 

This week our aim was to draw 4 views of a tapered block. Front, top, sectional right side and partial auxiliary from the sectional view. This exercise was a stepping stone for our first project. It was to make us think of complex 3d objects and conveying their shapes in simple drawings.

Things I struggled with this session:

understanding the concept of partial auxiliary view of the tapered surface from the section view

spreading out the different views evenly across the page

understanding the dimensions of the 3d object

Things I learned this session:

Planning is not everything: as much as I tried the grasp the concept before we began drawing, asking questions about what was already on the paper was easier

Ask as many questions as possible: we are only at the beginning of a very long journey of learning. If I don’t ask questions because I think they are dumb I’ll have bigger problems later on.

Drawing the legs of the block on different levels on the front view was a better choice. Initially, I drew the legs on the same level and skewed the bridge between them. When I did that, I couldn’t project some measurements across to other views. 

Drawing the title block first. Because I missed this step, there was not enough space left to add it in later on. I checked some of my friends' drawings and saw they managed to squeeze both the title block and the drawings in. So that means I could’ve done that myself. 

Non-primary views are views don’t align with the x-y-z planes.

Photo descriptions:

the first photo is the initial draft

the second photo is the final draft drawn with a pencil

the third photo is the final draft drawn with a pen

the fourth photo is the reference photo we were given for the tapered block

[just-shower-thoughts]

Efficiency is just optimised lazyness

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Second Communications lesson: Object drawings 

From what I gathered the aim of the second communications class was as follows: 

Getting acquainted with the measuring tools and standards used while trying to convey an object’s shape 

Understanding the multi view nature of orthogonal projection

Being able to transfer measurement information from one plane of view to the other

A)My experience:

Overall, I think I am learning useful communication tools fast. I’m getting acquainted with the tutors and therefore asking for help quicker than the week before.  Time management is still an issue but I’ve improved compared to the week before. 

B)My struggles: 

Using the french curves

Understanding the textbook materials 

C)Some of the things I’ve learnt:

Transferring measurements from top view of an object to the side view. This I learnt through making mistakes. As you can see in the final version of my drawing, I struggled with aligning measurements.

Photo description:

first photo is a rough sketch

second photo is a second draft

third photo is the final version

fourth photo is a detailed view of the final version

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My Photos from the excursion to Maroubra

Things that stood out to me in these photos:

pattern

hiarchy

contrast

color pallete

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Week 1: First Studio Results

I found it hard to engage with the exercise since it was very technical. I was a bit distracted but still gave it my best shot. I learned a bit about time management as I started off wanting everything to be perfect but ended up rushing it at the end. I was one of the last people left at the studio which did not encourage me to keep going at all. I learnt how to use a few new tools and got to have a glimpse of the teaching style used in this class. Working on my own page but still engaging with others helped my progress. 

I didn’t quite know how to document my progress. I was excited to see how everyone went through different areas of the exercise. Overall slightly disappointed in myself although I definitely learned a few new things. 

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A Quick Hello

Heyy guys, I’m Damla! I come from Turkey and I’m 18. If I were to define myself I would say I’m a pretty creative person. I’ve always loved arts and making 3d objects. 

I chose industrial design because I want to help people through creative projects. Industrial design seems to be the perfect media to do that. Looking forward to getting acquainted with you all.