From a borrowed iPad to a SpaceMouse and a helicopter that only exists on screen.
From a young age I was drawn to art, computers, mechanical engineering and robotics. I made a career in computer engineering, but I have poked at all of those fields over the years, mostly as a hobby rather than work.
My path into CAD started when the iPad Pro first came out, along with an app called Shapr3D. I did not own an iPad Pro at the time, so I borrowed a smaller model to try the app. A few days with the trial and I was hooked. I ordered a 12” iPad Pro and subscribed to Shapr3D’s paid plan, the lowest tier available then. For six straight months I spent my evenings learning CAD and pushing the software as far as it would go. I became an active member of the Shapr3D community, posting under the name Robotics Hobbyist.
During that stretch I worked on a few projects, including a model helicopter, but I ran into a wall: Shapr3D had no rendering. That sent me looking at alternatives, and I landed on Fusion 360. I exported my project out of Shapr3D and tried Fusion 360 with a normal mouse and keyboard, which felt clumsy. Then I found 3Dconnexion and the SpaceMouse. I bought a wireless SpaceMouse, learned it and my workflow clicked. For a while I designed in Shapr3D and rendered in Fusion 360.
Over time Shapr3D raised its prices a lot, which made it hard to justify as a hobbyist. I was grandfathered into the old pricing, but I missed my renewal window and got moved to the new, much higher tier. So I left Shapr3D and moved fully to Fusion 360, which has a free version for hobbyists. I still open Shapr3D on a standard iPad now and then to see how it has changed, but the pricing and the limited free version keep it off my main setup.
Over the years I have built a lot of models and kept refining that original helicopter. These days I reach for Fusion 360 whenever I need something custom or one-off, though CAD has become more of an occasional hobby as other interests pull at my time.
Shapr3D Featured My Early Work
While I was active in the Shapr3D community, the team took notice of what I was building. My models from that stretch, including a hexapod I modeled entirely on the iPad Pro with the Apple Pencil, ended up in Shapr3D’s own materials and in the press coverage as the app brought Siemens Parasolid CAD to the iPad Pro. Both of the videos below are Shapr3D pieces built around my projects, showing the actual builds in action: the first is a showcase, the second focuses on the hexapod and walks through Shapr3D’s features. What still gets me is that I had no formal CAD or engineering training. I was a self-taught hobbyist, and these are mainstream engineering and design outlets. Here is that coverage from 2017 and 2018:
- April 20, 2017 Shapr3D showcase video
- April 24, 2017 Eureka Magazine
- July 21, 2017 Shapr3D hexapod feature video
- December 11, 2017 3D Print
- December 12, 2017 Architosh
- December 13, 2017 All3DP
- December 13, 2017 Digital Engineering
- March 1, 2018 Architosh
RC Helicopter Project
This was my first real CAD project, a detailed 3D model heavily inspired by the Velocity Outrage 50 RC helicopter. It is not an exact replica. It is a tribute to the original design, carrying over many of the same mechanical elements and structural features.
I built it purely to learn: to develop CAD skills and to understand how a complex mechanical assembly fits together. It was never meant for production or distribution. It stands as a record of the learning process in 3D modeling and mechanical design.
Gallery
Various views and components of the RC helicopter design. Click any image to view it full size.
// comments