My Fusion Blog

Background Information:

CAD (Computer aided design) is using computers to help build, modify, or analyze digital models. In this assignment we were asked to use Onshape (a CAD program) to design a model of our choice in which doing so challenge our CAD skills. Over the past year I have had experience with CAD programs particularly, Onshape. I have explored the program though a drafting course, maker club, and a robotics course. Because I had prior knowledge in CAD I decided to challenge myself to learn a new tool. Before learning this new tool I had to think of an idea not too difficult but challenges me to use new skill’s. After going through a brainstorming process I had the idea to create a spinner.

Note: The dimensions used in my demonstrations of creating the fidget spinner are just meant to show recreation of my design and are not correct dimension’s for my final design.

Now that I had an idea of what to create I had to actually bring this idea to life in a CAD software. To start off I need to create a new document and rename it. After this I have to begin making my model however, I can’t just drag in a cube similar to TinkerCAD. I must click the sketch button in the top left corner, select which plane I want to sketch on a use the center point circle tool to make two circles and hover over their dimension’s and type in dimensions to the nearest mm.

After drawing my sketch I must extrude my design my clicking the extrude tool to the right of the sketch tool. After selecting the faces of my circles I press extrude and type in the desired depth which in this case is 10 mm.

After this create a smaller circle then simply use the extrude tool again except this time click remove and create a hole in the center of your smaller circle.

After this I must use my new tool which in this case is the circular pattern tool. First I select the tool and the entirety of my design before lastly clicking the inner edge of my circle with the hole and setting instance count to 3.

Now select the filet tool which rounds edges (Don’t mix it up with Chamfer) and drag the arrow until the edges are rounded enough. Now click the plus sign in the bottom left corner and create 2 new part studios. Right click on each of the art studios and rename them.

Now I’ll create the first part of the Dowel cap and Dowel part studio’s. Enter the dowel cap part studio then go back into sketch mode and create a circle with a 1mm smaller diameter than the diameter of the hole in the spinner base. Then extrude the circle and have the depth be identical to the spinner’s base.

Now create another circle with the sketch tool, with the same diameter as the center circle of the spinners base. Make sure that the center point of the two circles in this part studio line up. Then use the extrude tool and make the new circle have a depth of 5mm before using the filet tool on the edges of the circle with a filet of 2 mm.

Now to finish of this part use the sketch tool to create a center point circle with the same center point as the other two circles. Make the circles diameter be 8mm and extrude then click remove and use it to hollow out the smaller cylinder.

Lastly we need to create the other side of the dowel and cap so we’ll enter our other part studio. Then we will create a sketch of a circle with a diameter of 7mm and extrude in to 9mm. Then create another center point circle with the same center as the first one with a diameter of 30mm, extrude it by 5mm, and lastly use the filet tool to round the edges to 2mm. After this is done we must assemble the design in the assembly studio

Note below I switch to my actual final design because I remade it so I could show images for every step of the process. Also ignore the measurements above they are rough measurements so check my orthographic projection’s to find actual dimensions.

Lastly I must add my designs into the assembly page. To do this you must go to each part studio and select the entire model and copy it and paste it into the assembly. After this is I must use the fix tool which shows up after right clicking a piece to lock my spinner dowel cap in place.

Next I will use the revolute mate tool which credit to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwD4eg0kCGo on youtube for providing a great tutorial on how to use it. To use the revolving mate tool I must select it then left click the center of whatever hole or axis I want the object to rotate around. Then I need to left click the center of my object I want to rotate and this will create a revolving mate.

After creating this mate I can simply move my top dowel cap into place and right click then fix. Below is a video link showing the function of my design in onshape and an image of my final design in assembly.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lhkmIcUJ48JRKnDL8zqYvzL5LXn8P8yV/view?usp=sharing

Lastly to finish this assignment I was tasked with making an orthographic projection of my design with all the dimensions so someone following the steps could recreate my design with ease. An orthographic projection is a way of drawing an image in which shows 3 dimensions in one, a front, a side, and a top. To make my orthographic projection I created a drawing layer and used the insert view to add in different views of my pieces. Then I used the dimensions tool to carefully mark all of the dimensions in my design. Lastly I went back to my assembly page and clicked on the BOM table button (Bill of materials) and created a table before I copied the table. And pasted it into my drawing layer.

After finishing this assignment I have learned many key and valuable skills about Onshape, being the circular pattern tool, creating a BOM table, and adding dimensions to my drawing page. In the future I would like to become more efficient with using the drawing pages and using the tools within that page.

Below is a transcript of my interactions with notebook LM when learning how to use the circular pattern tool.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tkWwATQqgqHaLeGKYhsVEN3bUv6SOfzR82SK_kqPMyw/edit?usp=sharing

This is a direct link to my onshape document

https://sgs.onshape.com/documents/24a652919bfd39d65dee8ca0/w/12e7915ffef332c4bfc20094/e/d024cede1fff21bcdffe4dbd?renderMode=0&uiState=68f069058df61dfb88d59e8b

September 21st, 2025 Coding project #1 The Number game!
During the past week I’ve been working on a piece of code with the goal of demonstrating a basic understanding and way to use simple coding statements. Throughout this process I’ve had success, failure, and road blocks but in the end produced a piece of code I’m proud of. I used assistance from google gemini in the creation of my project and a link to my chat in a google doc is just below.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1c7dUjtHHSlJs8PB8FRADFDpH2eKm8l9Qf-JZ_EcIUOI/edit?usp=sharing
I chose to create a number guessing game in which the player would guess a number 1-10 and would be told whether the number was higher or lower than their guess. I executed my idea without any problems in which I found it quite amusing however for a source of entertainment it lacked complexity and became boring quick. I then added a guess counter, and a guess limit while keeping the thought of adding more ways to play in mind. I took the boldest move yet and made an attempt at creating multiple game modes. I first created a hard mode and added different winning lines and after learning it was quite simple I easily made a pro mode. In the end my code reflected a great use of the basic coding statements and accomplished its goal of being a fun entertaining game.
I also created a flow chart to outline the process when tackling a coding problem. The image is below!

Below is an in depth analysis of my code provided through this link
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1e2GC64BxgIyrPGTSjk7-cj3tSXUu_Agr?usp=sharing

The first block of code goes over my number generation set being “import random”, printed text to open out the game, the ability to chose different modes that affect guesses and number ranges. While true allows us to create a loop for our code continuing to the end. The print line is a basic coding idea in which you type print and it projects text that you put inside the brackets. Below is an if statement and elif statement and an else statement which basically means if you type h run that code, if you type p run that code, and lastly if neither of the others it will run that code. The values below the if/else statements are the guess you get and the number range in which connect to the guessing portion of the code and the number range that is generated.

In this code block in includes the end of the first part showing the text that will be printed if mode = easy and also the higher or lower, and number generator. Line 2-4 work together to generator a random number between 1 and the number range of either 10, 100, or 1000 depending on your mode. line 5 goes over how if guesses used is less than total guesses the game will continue. The next few lines go over how the guess must = an integer for the request on later lines to be processed and that guess used goes up by one each time. Another if statement is used how if the guess equals the generated number than it will go down below and print the winning text but if it is not the secret number being lower or higher the respective texts will be written. Lastly if the guesses left are less than your total guesses than the request to print how many guesses you have left is run.

To start off the last portion of code it covers if not whole numbers and used as an answer, the winning lines for each respective role, losing lines, what the number was, and if you want to play again. If the value is not an error connecting to the previous line then line 2 in this section is printed. If the mode at the start was pro than an original line would be printed with the same for other modes. The else statement below shows that if the number is not guessed that 2 lines will be printed with the second listing the randomly generated number. Lastly an input is asked from the player for whether they want to play again and if the play again input equals yes the game restarts and if it doesn’t represented by the != sign than the text on the last line is printed before the play through ends.

Thank you for taking time out of your day to read my blog post on my coding project, don’t worry if your keen on reading
More blog posts are coming soon!