Ian Reyes Critical Reflection 2

Essential Question: How can reverse engineering help me better understand the way certain electronics work?

As I have come to discover these past couple weeks, 3D design is an integral part of engineering, but also a skill that is much harder to master than I originally anticipated. Even with all of the tools that onshape offers, I am still unable to create the proper shapes for the components that make up the hairdryer. I have come up with very basic models, and while a few are fairly accurate in my opinion, there are others that I have spent a lot of time attempting to perfect, but have not been able to because of the different obstacles I have come across. The handle, mainly, is what’s been causing me such trouble. I have been attempting to hollow out a semicircle in the model I already have made for it because in the actual handle, it is split into two pieces, both of which are hollowed out. I haven’t been able to figure out how to do that yet, however, as well as how to fillet the curved edges to make it look more like a handle. After doing what I could with the original version I created, I decided to look up videos on youtube of other people doing similar things, but when I tried doing it for myself, it gave me a lot of errors, even after attempting to go back and redo the design. This process has taught me just how much skill and patience is required when it comes to engineering. Despite the errors I encounter, I shouldn’t be discouraged and should instead look for different angles, different methods for getting the model that I want, and not be satisfied with the very very bare minimum. There are a variety of tools on onshape and I’m sure that I’m simply not going about this model the right way. I will continue looking up videos and trying different methods and getting creative until I am happy with the final design.

One thought on “Ian Reyes Critical Reflection 2

  1. Ian, iterative design is one of the core mindsets for this work—it presupposes that we are constantly learning and improving on the design. One thing to be mindful of is that engineering can sometimes fall prey to the technical process of designing a solution that lives in the engineer’s head. The problem is that sometimes this can result in an engineered solution that does not really meet the user’s need. So one of the important aspects of the iterative design process is to get those early attempts into the hands of the eventual users so you can get timely feedback that can improve the design process.

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