Bioshock Belt Buckle in Bronze

Step 2 Solidworks!

Solidworks is an incredibly complex and incredibly powerful program for designing parts for anything from cars, to rockets, to blow driers, to buildings. I can't get into nearly enough detail to show the entire process of playing and tweaking to get it just right but I can give a pretty clear outline. If you want to learn the program in more detail there are a bunch of good video tutorials on youtube.

I've been using the program for a while so I find it pretty intuitive but it's really hard for a first timer. If you've never heard of it you might consider trying simpler programs like VectorWorks, Blender, or Google Sketchup before hunting around for SolidWorks. That being said SolidWorks is what I've got and what I know so it's what I used.

I started by importing my drawing on the top plane with insert>dxf/dwg. Then I created a new sketch on that drawing and traced over the shapes with the sketch tools. From there it was just a few simple cuts and extrusions to create the logo in 3d. Now all I had to do was scale it down to the right size and save it out as an STL (a common 3d format to deliver to the CAM program.)

Comments

[cryophile]

Isn't Solidworks really expensive? I know 3ds Max is, and that's a similar program.

[cornfedbeast]

I won my student edition in a CADD competition so i got it for free!

[bofthem]

That all depends on how willing you are to beg for the student version, go in with your friends and share a licence, or use the incredible but illicit powers of warez. But yeah, the full suite is like $9000. I think you can get technically legal copies from cheap software resellers like sofster, but I've never used it. I used to work for a design company so got a copy and license from them.