Week 5 and 7: Fusion Transition Model

The task required the construction of three prismatic rectangular elements within a transition area of our living space, which whilst a simple task for many seemed daunting due to the prismatic nature of my home. As a result, I first undertook a measurement of my house's floor plan to draft possible spaces for construction. Measurements were taken and rough initial sketches made. Due to the poor presentation of these working drawings they were collated in Adobe Illustrator, and as you'll see the design is simplified below.

After careful consideration about the nature of the space, I decided that modelling the garage, hallway and lounge+ kitchen as the three rectangles would provide ample opportunity for a demonstration of my folding techniques though the intricacy of their doorways, as well being ample targets for photoshopping unique materials surfaces. The planar dimensions can be inferred and scaled down to the 400x120mm rectangle on fusion, whilst the vertical dimensions remain a constant 2500mm. I chose to use paper due to the lack of carboard left from my other models, and chose to explore a new scale; building at 1:75 to get a feel for the larger elements within. Here's how I went about it!

First I placed some scrap grid paper ontop my portable light box and scaled down the dimensions appropriately, using the grid lines as reference.

 This resulted in a foldable model sheet on which I drew on the opposite side, this provided detail to the exterior sections.

The rest was just cutting, folding and gluing tabs.

Quick tip: razor blades struggle to cut cleanly through thin slices of paper they clump it up and push it aside. To prevent this don't penetrate the paper, instead score along the relevant lines, then use the flat of your edge of your blade apply pressure and tear it away. This is especially useful for small fragile elements like the door below.

Here's some views of the completed model.

This model was then recreated in Fusion 360 using the same dimensions as in the physical model. Its construction featured many iterations of the same 3 step process;

Draw element,

 Create tabs,

and Extrude element.

Bonus tip: ensure that tabs don't align between rooms (shown below) as this causes the grooves between tabs to collide, not only requiring thicker interlocking components but also not providing any support against horizontal sliding.

Below is a small animated summary of my build,

These tabs were all then laid out flat to be ready for lazer-cutting using the align tool.

The template then exported to illustrator and recoloured in accordance with the design lab standards. The lockdown means that it won't be printed an assembled in the near future, but I will endeavour to eventually do so. Please comment below to remind me one this is all done!