Engineer Zero

My education in sketchup continues.

1. If you’re going to replicate a shape a hundred times, make sure that it has a low polygon count. Hence I redesigned the prong component from a cylinder to a rectangular profile and got the ‘entity’ count down appreciably. Sketchup was starting to get slow and jerky until I did that.

2. Don’t mess around with styles. You’ll spend hours tinkering away your life and you’ll realize in the end that default is best. The same goes with colors. When it comes to robots, anodized aluminum is best where realism is concerned. I’ve shown the parts in different colors here because I wanted to hilight them.

3. It’s always a good idea to check the size of the goose. I discovered that my goose was eight feet tall, so I shrunk it by half and then I felt safer. I know my robot did too.

4. Sometimes it is good to re-invent the wheel. I tried to base the design for this ‘bot on my old shovelbot design, and there was no end to trouble. Shovelbot dated back to my pre-component days, and there were lots of flaws. One thing that really drove me nuts was that I couldn’t get the drawer to align with the face of the robot. I thought I was doing something wrong with the drawer, but it turned out that shovelbot had become slightly misaligned over the course of its short life. And that was only one problem among many. In the end, I probably could have saved a lot more time just by building a robot from scratch. Except the tires. Those are good.

5. See those little red wedges along the side of the lifter tower? When you’re working with something like a robot that has multiple configurations, you need some kind of reference mark for each pose.

6. I exported virtually all the images and then realized that the scene didn’t include the maximum lower extent of the prongs. So I had to reposition for another scene, and export all the images again. So it’s good to think about the degree of movement of your ‘bot before exporting.

7. Paper is not obsolete, even with pad computers. I found that the time came when I had to sketch out what I wanted to do on paper before I could do so on the computer. Is it because I’m a child of the twentieth century and my brain is not fully wired for the computer age, or is it because paper doth have its charms? I prefer to think the latter. At any rate, I probably could save myself some trouble by making a rough drawing on paper before I start moving the mouse. But . . . must . . . click . . . push/pull . . . the urge is strong. I will try to resist. No guarantees.

8. Finally, the design evolved as I built it, and it evolved because I built it. You can either see that as frustrating, or as a blessing. For once you can see how the robot’s parts interact in ‘3D,’ you realize both the design flaws and the possibilities for building a better design. And yes, thanks to this exercise in sketchup, it has occured to me how to make this a better bot. But I think I’ve spent enough time on goose poop for now . . . .

Why goose-ba? A riff on a certain robotic vacuum cleaner. Otherwise a clumsy name, I’ll have to think of something else to call it.

In case you’re not familiar with how WordPress galleries work, click on the images to continue . . . .

I’m not sure how far I want to go with this idea in terms of graphic portrayal, but anyhow here’s a shrunken shovelbot picking up after the mess that Canadian Geese leave. The background photograph was taken on Saturday in Redmond by the cell phone of yours truly. The camera is lo-res, the day was dreary, and the geese far away, so you can see why I had to sketch in some of my own.

Hey, it’s a work in progress.

Here’s a frontal view of the modifications (so far):

I think the camera is going away. Unlike shovelbot, goose-ba isn’t remote controlled.

Further adventures while climbing the Google Sketchup learning curve . . . .

I’m thinking about a design for a little robot that will clean up lawns after Canadian Geese have made their messes. So I thought that in order to make an illustration of the device in operation, I should show Canadian Geese as well. However, when I went to Google 3D Warehouse, the only image of a Canadian Goose I could find was of one in flight. Time for Plan B.

Plan B was to (1) search on the internet for a photo of a Canadian Goose that is walking, and (2) import the photo into Sketchup, and (3) trace over it.

I tried the trace two ways, first with the freehand tool and then with the arc tool. Here are the results:

It was a good photo, but nonetheless given that Canadian Geese feathers are basically graytones it was hard to tell where the shading left off and the marking began, hence the difference in ‘coloration’ between the two renditions.

That aside, I think it is apparent that the arc tool is the way to go for tracing. Besides looking more professional, it probably uses fewer polygons and thus less memory and thus less processor bandwidth. Which is good.

Now onto the robot.

I go out walking with my MP3 all the time, but then there comes a moment in the day when I have to take the dang earbuds off and put them in a pocket or on the car seat, and the cord invariably gets tangled, plus I don’t like lint and dust and dirt on things that I put in my ears anyway.

So I realize that there are already carrying cases that hold earbuds and cords, but my objective is to make one that is as small and thereby as convenient to carry as possible. Hence this design, in which most of the cord is external to the case.

This is just a first attempt at a design for an MP3 earbud cord case. I’d like something more organic, with smoother edges and softer, less breakable plastic, and maybe an artistic design. Stuff for later posts, as I am wont to say.

(Of course, if you’ve ever worked with Sketchup, you know that the real challenge for these drawings was in creating the cord itself!)

Today’s Sketchup practice session was to make a Classics Illustrated Martian tripod. It’s not quite right, especially the tentacles, which are as yet a skill too far. But I exported this image, then loaded it into Paint to crop, and then I realized that it was cool as it was. Certainly there was inspiration in the original! As mentioned in the Amazon review, “The artwork by Lou Cameron is simply superb.”

I did a search in the Google 3D Warehouse and couldn’t find a War of the Worlds tripod quite like this. Perhaps, with a little touching up, I should upload this. Well, when and if I ever figure out how to do the tentacles.

An architectural student in Beijing has built a ‘mini-house’ in the shape of an egg. The link is here.

I wanted to compare it to a shipping container, so I did the following:

Shipping containers, by the way, sell for around $1250. So in terms of floor area I think they’re the better deal.

Well, he gets credit for being creative and it is fun to look at and maybe live in. But if it rains a lot, I think the shipping container would be less muddy.