July 16th 2018: Monday

The focus of the past two weeks has been the physical body work of our motorcycle. The plan moving forward is to create a life-size/ 3D version of the body work out of cardboard to serve as an exact replica of the bike's final design. Once we create the life-size body work out of cardboard, we can then take exact measurements to help us accurately create the final body work out of fiber glass. In order for us to successfully do this, we must first understand the dimensions and points of depth from our sketches. A problem we faced last week was translating the 2D sketches into 3D cardboard cutouts because we spent too much time debating and trying to interpret curvature and depth from 2D sketches. To avoid running into this problem again moving forward, we decided to create a miniature model of the bike out of clay. Many automotive companies create models of their vehicles out of clay first and then base their final concept on the clay model. This inspired us to take the same path. A clay model is easy to create/tweak and will help us understand the curvature and depth of our bike in three dimensions. With this clay model, we will be able to more efficiently create the life-size cardboard model of the bike's body work. The first step in creating the mini clay model is to 3D print a small version of our CAD frame to serve as an armature. More updates to come.

Chicago Auto Show 2016