This week we each got to select an interesting machine/gadget to re-create in Adobe Illustrator.   Here is the one I chose to attempt to recreate in 2D.

At first I thought this would be fairly complicated to draw out in 2D.  It looked like there were a lot of different components to it, but it turns out that once you take everything apart and look at the separate layers the machine as a whole is really not too sophisticated.

Here is what I set out to recreate.  Each square on the grid is half an inch long, and that was the only form of measurement available from the book that I got this project from.  The majority of objects that I made in my Illustrator file were made up mainly of circles.  I had an easy time making those components (thanks to some experience from engi 120!), however I struggled a little on object C and the bigger object of group F.  Thankfully, the book explained where the shape of object C came from, so I was able to replicate it with decent accuracy.   The biggest struggle I had with this project was trying to make each of the components as close to the exact measurements as possible.  As you can tell from the blueprint, not all of the objects’ perimeters ended on a grid line.  Since the grid lines were the only way for me to tell what an objects measurements should be, I had to do a little bit of estimating here and there.

Here is my Illustrator drawing.

To make the funky looking object in group F I mainly used the line segment tool.  I also used the pen tool multiple times when I needed to make curved lines.  To make the two curved ends on the far left of the object, I made an ellipse and then used the scissor tool to  try to merge the ellipse with the rest of the object.  I learned that holding alt and scrolling with the mouse will zoom in and out, so I got a really magnified view when I used the scissor tool so that the object would look as neat as possible.

Adobe Illustrator definitely took me time to get used to, even just to learn the basics.  This was an enjoyable way to play around with the different tools, and hopefully next time I have a project involving Illustrator I’ll be able to breeze through it.