Learning CAD design!

I’m off on a little vacation right now, visiting family for a couple days in Maryland before looping up to New York City to visit my old friend Edouard for a few days. It’s a bit of a working vacation, but I’m also using some of the time for personal projects that I wouldn’t have time or focus for if I were at home, distracted by a zillion other things. One of them is (finally!) learning CAD design so I can create models for 3D printing!

The driver for this project is velvet weaving. My design-genius friend Dave came up with a design for a better velvet-weaving spool rack and tensioning system, but it requires some parts that are probably best 3D-printed. My esteemed spouse is currently busy doing other things, so I’ve decided to learn how to do my own designs for 3D printed objects. After all, how else am I supposed to design a 3D-printed flamethrower with which to take over the world? (Don’t worry, you can 3D-print in metal. I wouldn’t try to print a plastic flamethrower!)

Alas, the learning curve for CAD design software is as steep as the learning curve for Photoshop, so while at home I never had the peace, quiet, and free time to sit down and figure it out. While visiting family, though, I’ve got a lot more free time, so I spent about two hours this morning working my way through this excellent tutorial, and have now created this lovely stamp:

It was both far easier and far more complicated than I thought! I’m giving the knowledge a couple hours to settle into my head before tackling the next lesson. The author has a series, Learn Fusion 360 in 30 Days, on YouTube – I’m going to get through as many of the lessons as I can in the week that I’m traveling. I don’t need to become an expert in order to do the few simple projects I have in mind, but knowledge is never wasted!

Meanwhile, work on “Seasons of Creativity” continues. I think I’ve figured out how to do it with three painted-gradient wefts and one solid black weft. I may throw in some iridescent wefts for the butterflies and have ordered some wefts from Giovanna Imperia Designs. I’m currently working on designing the leaves, and will work on the butterflies next. I expect progress on that to be slow as working with Photoshop on a laptop screen is cramped and difficult – but, well, we’ll see. More photos once I get further along in my sketches!