I was inspired by designs of knives from a tattoo reference book I have. However, I quickly realized that I would need something much simpler once I began to appreciate how much measuring was involved and how finicky it was to switch from sketch to design to make notches.

Step 1: Sketch

I wanted to do something with curves and I focused on something that would be the hilt of the knife I originally wanted. Once I started sketching, I realized if I put everything together with decor on the outside it might start looking like a four-legged animal.

Step 2: Model

I realized I was in trouble pretty quickly when I started trying to make notches in the curved shapes I was doing. Whenever I edited a userParameter after extruding, things would disappear, which became very time-consuming. I started from scratch at least five times, each time able to reproduce what I had faster but each time realizing I should simplify what I was making even more. I needed Alejandro's help creating the notches on the round interior edge because I couldn't get the Rectangular Pattern functionality to work correctly. I originally wanted ellipses, circles, and straight lines to intersect, but I ditched everything but the circle and focused on measuring correctly so that the fits would work. I decided to go with simple interlocking circles. At the last second in Illustrator, I added some weird outline to the larger circle, because adding anything to the smaller circles risked messing up the fit.

Step 3: Cut

The cut was once again extremely fast with no cleanup. The circles made the press fit easier because they were a bit on the tighter side and I simply slid them in until they were stuck, it didn't matter that it wasn't 100% centered. I went later in the office hours so by then the laser cutter was tuned perfectly.

It even spins like a top (and stays together)! The video is too large to attach, though.

Step 4: Reflection

In hindsight, I would have started with an EXTREMELY simple concept that left room to expand on, rather than starting with something I thought was simple and cutting scope til what remained was overly simple. Instead of diving right into what I wanted to make, I would have watched even more YouTube tutorials about how to make things adjacent to what I had in mind for my design, just so that I was far more comfortable with the Fusion workflow and the timeline in particular. Normally when I start learning new software, I try to find an example that is cool enough to motivate me through the drudge work of learning how to menu-dive. I learned from last week to try to keep it simple, but I underestimated the Fusion interface because it seemed so intuitive during Jennifer's walkthrough.