Monday, December 16, 2013

Pegboard Presentation

Let's try to make cool stuff today!

First, I'd like you to get a little bit familiar with Inventor Presentation (.ipn) files. You will use these instructions to build a pretty simple animation using this software. Here's what your first product might look like:

As the instructions on the Google Doc state, there are some really cool "tweaks" you can make to your Pegboard animation. Try some of them out. Using terms that you use, give it some "swag". After recording your animation, be sure to save the file. Then upload that video file to your shared STEM folder on Google Drive. I'd love to include your work on this Byron STEM blog!
Another thing you could do is make a presentation file for your Furniture Project. If you and your partner get the video to your Google Drive, it would be quite easy to share it directly or on a Google Presentation.

Saturday, December 14, 2013

Engineering TED Talks

First of all, we had our little baby! Her name is Greta. She's awesome, and we're proud of her. Here are a couple of pictures.


I plan on coming back to school this Wednesday if things continue to go well. 
For today, you will watch and profile a couple of TED Talks that have to do with Engineering and/or Design. There are a lot of good ones out there, so you should find a couple that interest you the most. FOR TWO TED talks, you will answer some questions in a portfolio entry.
Here are some of the TED talks you might choose to watch and summarize.

Write an entry in your STEM Portfolio. These questions are also on our STEM Portfolio Example.

In your entry, answer these questions for at least 2 videos: 
  • Which TED talk did you watch? 
  • How long was it? 
  • What was it about? 
  • What did it have to do with engineering? 
  • What did you learn from watching the video?
  • Is this an “idea worth spreading”? Why or why not?

Thursday, December 12, 2013

Furniture Design/Storage Organizer Project

With your partner, you will create an innovative piece of furniture or storage organizer on our 3D Modeling program. This is the continuation of a project that we started during Hex 1. Here are some things you might want to complete in order to make your product awesome.

  • Find your "Best Design" from this project in your engineering notebooks. You can make things as simple or complex as you'd like them to be!
  • Make the parts of your design on Inventor. Use the skills you have on Inventor to shape, extrude, chamfer, and fillet each part to your liking.
  • Assemble those parts. Constraining the parts of your assembly the right way is tricky, but it's so cool when it works out. You can make doors that open, shelves that slide, objects that rotate, and more.
  • Make a Working Drawing (optional). This option would be great to show others your design and it's dimensions.
  • Create an Inventor Presentation (optional). If you'd like to, you can make a presentation within Inventor. There are lots of ways you can show your design moving the way it's supposed to. It will also allow you to "explode" the different parts of your assembled design.
  • Make a Google Presentation or Haiku Deck. You should put some pictures of your project on this. Also, explain what your "problem" was, what you designed to solve the problem, and what some of the features of your design are. How did you make it on Inventor?  


At some point during this project, take a break from what you're working on to look at another group's design. See if you can give them some feedback. Offer an additional idea that might make their product better. Ask another group to do the same for you, and then make your changes using "browser editing".
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Saturday, December 7, 2013

Pegboard Toy Progress

Students: I'm impressed by your work using Autodesk Inventor so far. I'm even more impressed by your ability to struggle with it for a while, and to help one another out. Here are a few resources that I want you to have access to:

  1. The Pegboard Toy Docs: I'd like you to finish the tasks on these Google Docs -- The Original Pegboard, the New Pegboard and Mallet, and the Pegboard Toy Working Drawings
  2. The 2013 Autodesk Inventor Professional Download: If you have a computer at home that can handle it, you can download the software to use at home. This could be really useful if you ever get a little bit behind, or if you just want to make something with it.