Design By Capture 2nd Place Winner: Jonathan Spoerke Rocks On
Autodesk ReMake and Autodesk Fusion 360 held the #DesignByCapture competition with 3D printing powerhouse My Mini Factory. In Stage 1, entrants were asked to scan a piece of equipment from their favorite hobby (a hiking boot, DJ headphones, video game accessory, etc) using photogrammetry and 3D model it using Autodesk ReMake software. Then, in Stage 2, that model was plugged into Autodesk Fusion 360 where the object was customized to the user's specs. The first place winner was Dr. Melanie Tang's drill bit holder, and the second place winner was Jonathan Spoerke's super cool guitar attachment. Read more about Jonathan's story below.
Tell us about yourself. How did you become interested in design? In 3D modeling and printing?
The first time I heard the term "Industrial Design" was in college. I was finishing up my undergrad in mechanical engineering at Georgia Tech and interning at Kids II, a local infant products company.
I always had a passion for "making things" but I never realized that there was an entire group of people responsible for designed and created products (I thought was what engineers did). After graduation I started working on my masters in industrial design and loved it; especially concept development and prototyping.
Jonathan Spoerke
After grad school I started designing footwear and taught myself surface modeling in Rhino for my job. I was also really into cosplay so when hobbyist 3D printers became a (somewhat) affordable thing a few years ago I started designing and printing my own props in my spare time.
What kind/s of hardware do you use?
I have Surface Pro 3 that I use as my primary computer. My 3D printer is a Frankenstein of a Makerbot 2. I say that because while I love it dearly, it has very few, if any, of its original parts.
I also recommend having a good IPA nearby, I know that's not technically 3D modeling hardware but it’s never made 3D modeling less enjoyable.
And Netflix running on my second monitor.
Tell me about the guitar mount. What inspired you to create it?
The guitar mount idea came about during my ongoing struggle to teach myself to play guitar. A few weeks ago I found a Guitar Hero style tutorial app and 20 minutes later found myself in this horrible bent over posture trying to simultaneously play the guitar and see the phone that was lying on the coffee table.
I was throwing around a few ideas in my head for this competition but when I woke up still sore I decided this idea was worth exploring. I sketched out a few different designs on paper but I did most of the iterative development to make it "work" on the computer. Once I had the guitar scan imported, I was able modify the sketches for the mount and test out different configurations.
Had you used ReMake or Fusion before?
I played around with 123D Catch and Design about a year ago but this is the first time I've used ReMake and Fusion.
Did you run into any challenges during the competition?
I switch back and forth between parametric modeling and surface modeling but have been using surface modeling for my past few projects. This design had some moving parts and I wanted to build the model in Fusion parametrically so the biggest challenge I ran into was shifting my brain back into that style of thinking/ modeling.
“In design school they teach you the importance of thinking outside of yourself but I liked the challenge of ‘designing something for yourself’”
What did you like about the competition?
It’s funny, in design school they teach you the importance of thinking outside of yourself but I liked the challenge of "designing something for yourself" because quite honestly, when you're not on a student's budget, it's really easy to just buy stuff. It's hard to identify an unmet need when you can solve most of your problems with Amazon Prime.
It's a great challenge to get out of the mind set of comparison shopping between products that are "OK" and into the mindset that you have the tools to design "the perfect" guitar mount, laptop bag, cellphone case, etc. I also really like that challenge required the use of some new software. It's easy to get into a groove with the software you use all the time and you don't realize all the new and powerful stuff that is coming out.
“This is the first program that I’ve used that quickly and easily gets the mesh to point where its usable.”
What did you like about using ReMake and/or Fusion?
I was really impressed with mesh editing and simplification tools in Remake, raw 3D scan data is typically pretty messy and this is the first program that I've used that quickly and easily gets the mesh to point where its usable. I'm excited about Fusion because I feel like it gives you a solid, straight forward set of parametric and surface modeling tools to work with and just make things.
In my other CAD programs the 80/20 rule definitely applies; I use 20% of the tools 80% of the time and the Fusion interface puts those tools front and center. I feel like I've only scratched the surface but I'm excited to keep exploring.
How do you plan to use ReMake and Fusion next? What are your ideas?
I've never used a 3D scanner that could do room scale so I'm going to use ReMake to scan my mannequin to use for some cosplay armor CAD. I'm planning on spending more time with Fusion and I'd like to start making cosplay CAD tutorial videos with it.
About a year ago I set out to start teaching people 3D modeling online but couldn't find a solid, full featured CAD program that I felt like hobbyist could get their hands (in fact I cautioned people not to learn CAD by using most of the free software out there because I felt like it would do more harm than good). I feel like Fusion gives hobbyists a professional CAD package that's actually affordable.
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Download Jonathan's ready-to-3D-print guitar attachment model here. Autodesk ReMake is available for both Mac and Windows. Download a free trial at remake.autodesk.com.