CAD Lesson, Group A

Hey everyone (this is Max, just FYI) — before you get started on the CAD lessons, I wanted to share some quick info…

This should only take about 45 minutes to 1 hour and a half. It’s not meant to be long or annoying summer break homework, but instead an important opportunity to improve your skills and significantly strengthen our robotics team for the rest of the season and for years to come!
We just had workshops, however, due to the limited time we had, I can understand how you may feel you aren’t ready to CAD independently yet. For that reason, I’ve laid out several YouTube videos for you to watch. If you choose to view the videos, please create a new document in Onshape, and following along with the videos, as they’ll make the process much easier.
If you run into problems or start getting really frustrated while CADing, please DM me! This isn’t meant to make you suffer — it’s about helping you get better at CAD and preparing you to better support your team. Remeber, CAD is hard, its normal to rage quit here or there, but its important to get those rage quits out of the way before the season begins!

You CAN DO THIS!!

Videos to re-learn what the CAD Workshop covered.

Start with these videos (Total Time ≈ 40 Minutes)… This teaches the basics of making a 3D model in Onshape and will be helpful when you make your phone stand later.

For reference, the following three videos are from a 7-part series; however, the ones I selected are all you need to know for the scope of this CAD homework. The videos will tell you to work in inches, which you are welcome to do for this video series. However, when you actually CAD for the robot, or create your final project for this winter break class, I WILL CRASH OUT IF YOU DO NOT USE mm AS YOUR UNITS!!! 😭

Also, moving around in the 3D environment (Rotating and panning the camera) can feel very frustrating at first. I highly recommend you use a mouse; it will help a ton! Ironically, these more nitty-gritty, navigation aspects are covered more in video number three, in case you want to watch that a little sooner 🙂.

Video # 1, (Creating a Basic 3D Object from a sketch, Video 1 out of 5)

Beginner Tutorial 1/5 - Onshape 3D CAD - Creating Sketches and Objects

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Video # 2, (Adding indents to your 3D Part From Video 1)

Beginner Tutorial 2/5 - Onshape 3D CAD - Adding Features

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Video # 3, (Very Quick Video, Navigating Onshape)

Beginner Tutorial 4/5 - Onshape 3D CAD - Views and Orientation

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Final Project - Design a Phone Stand

I know this final project has nothing to do with building the robot, but that would take a very coordinated effort. So I figured instead of assigning a pointless, unfun thing like designing a bracket, you could design a phone stand, and even be a little creative! Note: This is the thing that the cabinet will monitor people doing!

Part of the challenge isn't just to use the stuff learned only from the videos above, but to Google how to use other tools. For example, you may want to use the Filet Tool to round off corners. Or learn the Boolean tool to combine objects into one!