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Tron Disc Difficulties
angus_bott
Member Posts: 16 ✭
So for the past few days I have been working on the identity disc from Tron: Legacy. I have done as much as I am able to with my current skills and am asking for assistance on making it as realistic and detailed as possible. I am willing to share the document with people if they are willing to help. I am also hoping to be able to put LED's in it so it lights up once printed (colored parts printed using translucent filament). Channeling for that would also be much appreciated.
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I shared the document with you
The first thing I did to your design is some simple management since there's 2 people working on the design. I've versioned what you've sent me which sets a point in the design that you can always get back to easily. I've also created a branch called 'billy's mods' to separate what I do from what you did. There's a lot of reasons to branch & merge, this is only one of the ways it can be used.
Branched design to separate my stuff from your stuff:
I've shelled the part which removes the inside material, in this case I used 'hollow'. Below shows a cross section (shift x) of the part so I can see what's going on with the plastic's wall thickness.
Cross section of the profile showing inside & material wall thicknesses:
Typically plastic parts are 2mm thick and in this case, the wall wants to be 1mm which is too thin. I'm thinking we should leave the insides solid since you're going to print these parts and it won't matter. If this were an injection molded part, the thicker areas would sink and you wouldn't like the outside look of your part.
Removed the shell and showing the cross section:
In the model, I've left the shell feature and added a comment stating that I think we should remove it and return to a solid part. I've used your handle @angus_bott in the comment which should notify you that I've added a comment. The comment is attached to the feature so it's easy to understand what I'm talking about.
As the design grows, it's important that we document why we're doing these things. If this were a medical device, the history of have something created becomes important when filing with the FDA. This technique, while allowing us to communicate, also fulfills the requirement of documenting the process of how we created this thing. Maybe not for us, but in industry, this is important.
Showing comment about shell feature:
Here's an image I downloaded off the web and added inside our project:
The proportions aren't quite right. It would be nice to find a front view of a tron legacy identity disk. Do you have one?
Here's an iso view with the newly added image, the disk seems like it's really flat:
Do you have a front view of the disk?:
Drawing of the tron legacy identity disk:
The model seems small when I look at images on the web and I see people holding the disk, my guess it's twice this size. I haven't seen the movie, so I can't say I really know how big this thing is. Do you have a rough idea what the diameter might be?
That's a pretty good image. I just rotated the view to match the geometry to the image. I think we can see that the side profile is a little off and the current disk might be too flat. That's easy to fix.
Before we modify any geometry I'd like to do some more house keeping. Let's make this so everything updates when we make changes.
Your project structure is the perfect setup for a file based solid modeler where you have an assembly and each part has it's own part studio/file.
Old file based structure:
The problem is the parts aren't related to one another and making a change means you have to open each part studio and propagate any design updates. With older file based system's you can use in-context to work in the assembly and assign relationships between the parts. In practice this makes managing all the files difficult and usually things get messed up. Many people avoid using in-context design because of it's complexity and difficulty managing the files.
Onshape's part studios allow for multiple parts and the web of relationships is eliminated. I'm going to work in part studio 1 and define all the parts. This way I can easily assign references between parts and build a model that behaves.
Onshape structure with parts inside a part studio:
I built the lens & led inside the part studio based on geometry from the body. The lens & led now have references to the body so that if the body updates, the lens & led go along with those changes.
Now that everything is tied together, we can begin changing the body geometry.
Updated assembly:
I keep wanting to go back to our front image view, so I defined a named view.
Named view to our front image:
Now, to build our geometry. As a young to be engineer, we always want to build 1:1. In other words, we want our model to be the real dimensions, we don't want to scale when we export to a printer.
With that, I moved to the top of the feature tree and my first feature is a sketch called "layout". The word "layout" means that I'm referencing this sketch to all my geometry. The next guy who opens our model will know how to change our model. I'm thinking the disc size is about 250mm. I could be wrong, feel free to change it.
Layout sketch with images:
Updated profile based on downloaded images:
Added some more geometry:
Do you have any questions?
But first we need to establish a good foundation, a good project structure. To me project structure is everything especially when 2 people are collaborating. We are sharing this model and feel free to review my features. Tear the model up and change it. If something breaks, ctrl-z and return before your change. If you break it, I'll fix it and we'll talk about why it broke. It's a fairly robust model but it will break. Write comments on features and let me know what you're thinking. At my work, we'll have dozens of comment threads going on about different features.
Your original question, "How to create a sketch for the LED's?".
LED sketch surface definition:
Most people struggle trying to define a plane to sketch on. I tend to extrude surfaces and sketch on an extruded surface. Above you can see that I extruded the single line from the profile sketch. This produces an analytic planar face that can be used to make a sketch.
LED sketch:
Notice how I added add 2 circles onto the extruded surface. The sketch plane was defined by picking the extruded surface. Also, notice the 12mm offset dimension. I had to add this because every time I changed the model, the 2 circles slid off the body causing an error. Fixing these little things make the model more robust.
Extruding LED boss:
Extruding is straight forward.
Patterning LED boss:
We want to draw one detail and then pattern or mirror it. We don't want to create the same feature twice, once here and again over there. This is the trick about adding details that scale up easily (notice we now have 20 LED's) and typically patterned/mirrored features make a more robust model.
Version & History:
I've noticed that you versioned and branched to create your own work space. Nice!
Notice how I'm versioning my workspace before doing something like adding details to the model. I find naming these things in this list so important because at work, I'll have many projects going and trying to remember what I did 3 weeks ago is too difficult. Looking at the graph it's pretty clear what I'm doing and what you're doing.
I hope you're planning on becoming an engineer, you're really good at this stuff.
Owen S.
HWM-Water Ltd
Take notice of the highlighted seeds. These simple features & bodies are both mirrored & patterned to do most of the work.
You can model the whole Tron Legacy Identity Disc in 1 part studio but it creates a tremendous number of parts in your part studio which isn't recommended. That's where the assembly comes into practice because it handles part instancing better than a part studio. You can do it in a part studio, but the replication should be done in an assembly.
The Tron: Uprising LED's should be driven with equations to make them more robust. Currently you have the do the math in your head to make it look right. If I were going to hang this model on the web and make these driven in a configuration, I'd drive these with equations so the user could define the number of LED's he wanted and the equations would make it look right.
The outer ring was a body split and then the color was changed for the outer ring. This split is how you can split the model up for printing.
I name my sketches so I can find the features in the tree. It's not my idea, but it's a good practice. You need to keep the feature tree organized.
I'll build the assembly next and show you how this should be done. Also, with an assembly, you can start adding purchased items like batteries & LED's.
I'll also parameterize the profile sketch so you can change it's shape and flatten out the top. After all, it's a parametric modeler and should allow change. Look at the current profile sketch and then in the next couple of days I'll update that sketch by add some more dimensions and moving the led reference. That's all it'll take to control the profile.
27 features to make a Tron Disk - Uprising Edition:
Angus is the hero here. He's a very sharp kid and can become a great engineer if that's what he wants.
I am reading what you are teaching me with interest and investment. I may not put many words into my replies but do know that I am absorbing the invaluable information you are teaching this 16 year old. I see that you added the LED bosses to the underside as well. By any chance are we trying to make this two discs that fit together? Reference for this thought: Rinzler's twin discs from the movie. If so, the multiple LED lenses on the top and bottom should more so meet in the middle of the model with single ring lenses on the top and bottom. By this logic, the de-bossed curve into line that outlines the outer edge of the continuous lens should be added to both top and bottom as well.
My goal is to have you change it/fix it and for you to understand how it works. If you can do this, you could walk into any engineering firm, show'm your chops, and get a great part-time job while you go to college.
Try changing the profile sketch:
I've versioned the document already, so you can't destroy anything.
Before you begin, I need to explain how parametric modeling works. The lines in a sketch create surfaces and are associated to one another. If you delete a sketch entity, you change the topology of the model because you'll remove a surface in the model. This in it self isn't bad but since this sketch is at the top of the feature tree and theres a lot of features below, what if I associated some other feature to a surface's edge? So, let's say you delete a line in the sketch, that deletes the surface, the surface has an edge, and let's say you put a fillet on that edge. Well, that fillet would go red because it lost it's reference. All this associative stuff that I'm talking about, and theres 1,000 of them in a model, are referred to as references. It's how everything gets tied together and what you need to keep clean and organized. It'll take time, but you'll get there.
What surface did this line create?:
So I'm not going to delete anything and added the highlighted dimension which constrained my sketch:
This pushed the LED's to outer edge because they were referencing the outer edge:
Remember that 12mm dimension? I changed it to 8mm to put the LED back on the part:
To fix the flat LEDs, I rerouted the reference from the outer edge to the inner:
And:
I'm not sure this is the shape either, you play with the sketch and see if you can define the shape. If the model blows up, I'll fix it.
I like this one better 18mm thick:
Don't worry about breaking the model.
So I first started off with making a branch from your finished V6 as shown below.
Next I decided to go ahead and play around with the dimensions a little, see what I could do to get it to where I wanted it. I made the model a bit slimmer and put the many different LED lenses into the middle of the model so when sliced along the Z axis, it creates two perfectly identical discs that can, in theory, hide one another when on say a mount on someone's back.
And as it is reaching the late night in my timezone, I am leaving the model for the night and I am looking for guidance on rotating the LED bosses around the origin by 45 degrees to go into line with the top down view image. I also made the sketch of the continuous LED lens ring for the top but am having some difficulty making it work with the angles of the model. I know they are simple fixes but I am still an infant at this. Tomorrow is my day off from work and seeing as how I was working all day today I will be spending it with my dad. While we have been working on this I also made a semi-functional tanto style kitchen knife that I can share with you if you would like. Thank you for everything so far and you have taught me more than I could have ever hoped.
And this right here, below, is the tanto knife I have created in my spare time. Hey you, yeah, you, Onshape moderators, this isn't a weapon. It was a learning experience for me to create multiple parts within one part studio and I intend to use it as a 3D printed knife for cutting fruit.
@owen_sparks
I'm not really the hero here, Bill is for teaching me all of this. I'm just learning, absorbing, and applying.
I hope your day went well and I would like to wish you a belated happy Father's Day and you as well, @owen_sparks if you are a dad.
Bill, you helped and taught me so much and more than I had ever imagined learning from this. This took longer than expected but it was worth it in every way imaginable. Thank you again, Bill. And for those who have been following along, here is a semi-transparent look at the finished model. The 18 LED lenses are inside the middle of the frame so it can be cut along the Z axis to create two identical twin discs, much like Rinzler in the movie.
This is a look at the part studio where we only created the first two lenses so that there are not an insane number of parts being inserted into the assembly. The next picture is one in the assembly after a circular pattern was made for the two with the axis being the orange outer ring's inner top edge.
I enjoyed working with you also.