INVENTOR
Inventor is a computer software program that can be used to create many different things. Using this program, you can take something as simple as a sketch and turn it into a three dimensional object that can later be printed into something tangible. Essentially, it is a way to create and turn your ideas into something real.
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These are some examples of some sketches I made of the widgets in my designer notebook.
After that, I clicked "Finish Sketch" and extruded my sketch one inch to get the final product.
These are the rest of the widgets that I made in Inventor but didn't end up printing.
When I was finished in Inventor, I inserted the widget into Maker Bot where the widget was prepped for printing. The picture on the right is the print preview.
The final step of this project was actually printing the widget. After saving the file to my flash drive, I plugged it into the 3-D printer and printed my widget.
WHAT I LEARNED
I learned so much during this project and was exposed to so many new things that I had never really used previously. In Tech Ed in seventh grade we worked with Inventor a little bit, but it was nothing like this project. To start, I learned to be more independent and use my resources if I am confused about something because it is most likely in the handout. Going into this class, I hardly knew how to use my H-drive or really how to save things to my computer and this project taught me how to do that with no problems. By the end, I could create a shape in Inventor and save it to my IDEA folder in my H-drive super easily which I definitely could not do in the beginning of the unit. I also learned how to use Maker Bot to set up an object for printing and how to add something to a flash drive. Finally, I learned how to use a 3-D printer. Similarly to what I said before, I have had some experience with 3-D printing but that was when things were printed for me. For this project, I got to actually use the printer myself and it was super fun. Overall, this project taught me a lot and gave me and opportunity to learn about things I have had little to no experience with.