Reverse Engineered Project Week 2

 So this week was a lot of fixing mistakes that I made the week before. Apparently I managed to have most of my measurements be some level of off so this meant that I had a lot of work to do. 

Firstly, I realized that the base I had made by guessing how to get the most accurate shape did not do the job. Originally, I had found the measurement of the base from its largest parts from end to end and across and then tried to use curves to get something that looked accurate. After trying to place my screw holes I realized that I was way off. So this week with Brian's suggestion I instead took a couple of reference measurements and then used an image to base the shape off of. After this, I rechecked the rest of my measurements and came up with an improved version of this base. The screw was still pretty close to the edge but that seemed accurate to the toy so I was happy. 

The top image is my first iteration and the lower one is my second

Next, I went through and remodeled the base once again, this time also adding in the screw holes and most of the less symmetrical parts. 

The screw holes were really fun to problem solve because there was an extra space on the bottom to account for! I also thought the ramp was pretty fun since I had to figure out how to have it end up flesh with the bottom of the toy and not leave a gap on top. Accounting for the depth of these parts was also a bit of a challenge since it's not something I usually give much thought when putting together objects physically since I don't usually have that level of control. 

Lastly, the thing I gave up on last week but was able to figure out after our lesson this week was how to use the netsrf to create the domed top of the ladybug. Last week I couldn't figure out why the front of the dome wouldn't come together and I think the issue came down to not having the front and back of the bottom as separate pieces. Next, I knew the curve on top of the ladybug wasn't right so I took reference photos along with measurements and combined them into a much better curve for the top of it's back from front to back (unfortunately I got really in the zone and forgot to take pictures of this process). Once I had a clear idea of what I needed I used the control point curve to draw along the line of the back. Then, because I knew the side to side measurement was more symmetrical I made lines from the outermost parts of those sides directly up and connected them with a circle that made contact with those lines and the front to back line. I then used the tangent angle on one side to smooth out the curve  

So I split the tops and bottoms into different pieces and it worked great! I capped the object and attempted to use the shell tool to hollow it out. Unfortunately this did not work. So I remodeled all of the curves with the inside edge instead of the outside one and used the offsetsrf tool to make it the right depth. This took some extra time but gave me a great result!

Overall, it was a frustrating week just because of how much I had to fix but I think it was worth the effort and I'm excited to get through the rest of this now that these big complex parts are done.