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CAD Battle #1 - January 2026 (Best of the Worst Competition)

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Comments

  • Derek_Van_Allen_BDDerek_Van_Allen_BD Member Posts: 686 PRO

    Rest assured I'll host another one of these that's completely centered around the idea of model stability that's resistant to changes to the initial prompt and do it as a two partner. Only, I won't tell you guys what I'm changing about the prompt before setting in motion round 2, because my clients don't do that to me.

  • Ste_WilsonSte_Wilson Member Posts: 556 EDU
  • junior_tissingjunior_tissing Member Posts: 3 โœญ

    @Derek_Van_Allen_BD

    I made my document public. I thought the link would have worked, but you should be able to dissect it now.

    About halfway through, I noticed that my part was a little different when comparing the volumes. By deriving them and using Boolean operations, I could see where I made the error and fix it.

  • Derek_Van_Allen_BDDerek_Van_Allen_BD Member Posts: 686 PRO

    Last day to get your submissions in everyone, and still an opportunity to see the worst submission yet now that there's a bunch of examples to pull from. At midnight EST submissions will close and the voting period will begin for all of the valid submissions posted in this thread.

    I will say I've already chosen a personal favorite but in the interest of impartiality I won't be saying which one it is until later in the voting stages.

  • bryan_lagrangebryan_lagrange Member, User Group Leader Posts: 976 โœญโœญโœญโœญโœญ

    Let the voting begin.

    Bryan Lagrange
    Twitter:ย @BryanLAGdesign

  • Derek_Van_Allen_BDDerek_Van_Allen_BD Member Posts: 686 PRO

    Meant to work on a summary post for voting yesterday but got lost in the sheet metal sauce real hard. I'll update this comment with more links and details in a minute.

    Here are the submissions that made it in before the deadline:

    @ry_gb with helical heresy

    @EvanReese drawing like it's TinkerCAD

    @bryan_lagrange with the sweeps

    @Derek_Van_Allen_BD committing sins in sheet metal for the bit

    @jelte_steur_info with the lofty lifter

    @emagdalenaC2i with the one feature to rule them all

    @bryan_lagrange again with a drawing implementation but technically no part. Gotta send this one to an old school shop.

    @EvanReese with a second entry that's topologically dissimilar to the target but within manufacturing tolerances.

    @martin_kopplow with an entry that uses some banned features but a level of cursed that I have to respect. Though if this entry ties with another, the win will go to the one that has a compliant feature list.

    @bryan_lagrange with a third entry, sweeping even harder than the first. Really wants to hold onto that trophy.

    @junior_tissing with a naming convention clearly inspired directly by that former coworker I mentioned in a previous post. Might even be them in disguise, I can't prove it.

    @Ste_Wilson with the self titled Not Quite the Worst submission. This one does not pass the geometric test for producing the target part, so it does not qualify on that basis as an entry but as a community competition I'll leave the judgement to the masses.

    I think that's all of the entries that made it in before the deadline. If not I'll update this post with any I missed. If you are one of the individuals that posted many submissions I didn't specify that you were limited to only one entry so that's fair game, and to incentivize engagement in these in the future I'm going to count all votes that went towards any of your entries as votes for you regardless of which one gets the nod.

    Happy voting everyone.

  • bryan_lagrangebryan_lagrange Member, User Group Leader Posts: 976 โœญโœญโœญโœญโœญ

    My vote goes to @EvanReese tinkercad method

    Bryan Lagrange
    Twitter:ย @BryanLAGdesign

  • S1monS1mon Member Posts: 3,945 PRO

    <sarcasm: on> I think I should win. I did the worst thing possible - I had all these ideas, and I thought about doing the project, but I didn't actually start it. <sarcasm: off>

    Seriously, this is a great idea. It's hard to pick.

    Simon Gatrall | Product Development, Engineering, Design, Onshape | Ex- IDEO, PCH, Unagi, Carbon | LinkedIn

  • Derek_Van_Allen_BDDerek_Van_Allen_BD Member Posts: 686 PRO

    Shout out to Aaron and Russel in the office next to mine for talking about doing an entry all month and never even making a forum account let alone a submission. Frontrunners in the competition by @S1mon's metric.

  • john_mcclaryjohn_mcclary Member, Developers Posts: 4,038 PRO

    me too, but there was no way I could do this. My anxiety would kill me trying to model like this.

  • EvanReeseEvanReese Member, Mentor Posts: 2,807 PRO

    There are many horrendous entries here, but @Derek_Van_Allen_BD with the final part in the SM flat pattern almost made me spit out my coffee. That's my vote.

    Honorable mentions to @junior_tissing for feature names and @martin_kopplow for modeling the sawblades required to perform model cuts.

    Evan Reese
    The Onsherpa | Reach peak Onshape productivity
    www.theonsherpa.com
  • ry_gbry_gb Member, csevp, pcbaevp Posts: 175 PRO

    Derek's entry made me so confused for big while.. I guess no one said you couldn't *derive* the fully finished part into the model. But I have to applaud the 3D flat pattern ๐Ÿ˜‚

    Ramon Yip | glassboard.com

  • glen_dewsburyglen_dewsbury Member Posts: 1,268 PRO

    Evan Reese for the win with curves and faces but not by much. No part until enclose! Lots of inventive methods by all to accomplish the end results by some of the most awkward means. So many good examples of things to avoid.

    Derek. Good call on setting up this challenge.

  • glen_dewsburyglen_dewsbury Member Posts: 1,268 PRO
  • Derek_Van_Allen_BDDerek_Van_Allen_BD Member Posts: 686 PRO

    I will probably ban the derive loophole for future competitions, and I did think about doing so from the jump but when the intrusive thoughts told me to do the sheet metal funny I'm glad I left the door open to it.

    Although really the point of this competition was to rule out the obvious approach and see what people can come up with when the first thing that came to mind was off the table. Are any of these solutions people have submitted better solutions to making the target part than the original sample document? Well, probably not. But you might find yourself working on a more complex part that requires geometry that you can't achieve with extrude, hole, fillet, chamfer, shell, mirror, or boolean for whatever reason those tools fail you. In those cases lateral thinking is king and the worst ideas might turn out to be the best ideas.

    You definitely don't need the Black Market Boolean though. Trust me.

  • john_mcclaryjohn_mcclary Member, Developers Posts: 4,038 PRO

    I say it should go to @ry_gb the whole helix workflow is just awesome.

    I like others that have intentionally left errors throughout and just worked around them. But I think @ry_gb did a good job of showing something messy, while still looking as if the modeler thought he did nothing wrong.

  • ry_gbry_gb Member, csevp, pcbaevp Posts: 175 PRO
    edited February 5

    Thanks! I was pretty tickled when I figured that one out. I did similar things with the sweeps like others did, but I think the cursed helix sweeps are really the piece de resistance.

    Also, "thought he did nothing wrong"

    image.png

    Ramon Yip | glassboard.com

  • john_mcclaryjohn_mcclary Member, Developers Posts: 4,038 PRO
  • Ste_WilsonSte_Wilson Member Posts: 556 EDU
    edited 3:51PM

    @john_mcclary Yeah, just had a double check now. Ah well. Next time!

    Infact, looking closer, I've missed the mark on a few points. Must try harder.

  • Derek_Van_Allen_BDDerek_Van_Allen_BD Member Posts: 686 PRO
    edited 3:09PM

    Tallying up the votes so far because I know a lot of y'all don't post on weekends, here are the current standings:

    @EvanReese ||

    @Derek_Van_Allen_BD |

    @ry_gb |

    Still anyone's game before the voting closes on Saturday. If we end up with a tie, possible tie breakers would be whichever entrant had fewer submissions (they got more votes per submission) or in the case that I've allowed some geometry or features to slide and the tied entrants have the same number of submissions, it'll go to whomever bent the rules the least.

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