Lab Assignment 1

The process of creating the Rubix cube and simply using Fusion 360 was initially quite difficult for me. I was having a hard time figuring out how to create sketches and translate them into 3D shapes, but after experimenting for a short period, I started to get the hang of it. The movement and different planes did not feel very intuitive to me, and it was at times difficult to figure out which axis I wanted to build on and how to move around my view. Even though the Rubix cube seemed like a relatively intuitive shape, making sure that the corners of each of the cubes were in the right position and had accurately rounded corners was the biggest challenge for me. I spent a lot of time experimenting with how I could round the corners to most accurately mimic the cube, which I think I was eventually able to accomplish. A compromise that I had to make for this shape was making the inside of the cube accurate and implementing movement. In the future, I think it would be interesting to explore how I could make the cube fully operational so that it could turn in each direction and mimic the inter-workings of a Rubix cube. A model of this shape could be useful in research in teaching so that computer software and tools could analyze how humans solve the Rubix cube and possibly even develop algorithms that would be fastest considering the size of the cube and how it turns in somebody’s hands. Fusion 360 could be incredibly useful in trying to mimic real-world puzzles and objects that we want computers to be able to help us solve. The biggest tip that helped me with Fusion 360 was using the left side menu to select each shape that has been added to the project, which allows you to select them independently without having to rely on the drag select, and also lets you easily hide shapes that are getting in the way when changing certain features of the overall object.