RES.16-002 | January IAP 2024 | Non-Credit

How to CAD Almost Anything

Course Description

Have you ever wondered how objects from our daily lives are designed? How can we generate a computer 3D model of a mug, a bottle of Diet Coke, or a Saturn V rocket? What about designing the blades of a jet engine? A test dummy? How about making an animation of a LEGO house building itself? Or making a realistic render …

Have you ever wondered how objects from our daily lives are designed? How can we generate a computer 3D model of a mug, a bottle of Diet Coke, or a Saturn V rocket? What about designing the blades of a jet engine? A test dummy? How about making an animation of a LEGO house building itself? Or making a realistic render of a bowl of fruit? In this workshop, you will learn skills to design all these and much more!

Split into nine sessions, this workshop introduces CAD (Computer Aided Design) using the parametric modeling software SolidWorks, through various fun examples focused on reverse engineering. In contrast to traditional mechanical design courses, this workshop emphasizes the design process itself, understanding how we can plan and best leverage our available tools to arrive at our desired result. Thus, the sessions are less about following the instructions on an engineering drawing, and more about independent thinking and strategizing, reverse engineering an object into a 3D model.

Come and learn how to CAD almost anything!

This supplemental resource offers links to the class’s website and workshop materials as well as a companion playlist of session recordings on YouTube.

Learning Resource Types
Lecture Notes
Lecture Videos
This image has text of "How to CAD Almost Anything" in the middle and at the bottom with the text of "MIT AeroAstro; several objects are on this image as well (from right to left) including a rocket, a lego figure, MIT logo, a watch, a diet coke soda can, a banana, an MIT ring,  a lego block, a mesh net tube, a racket, and a drone
Students in this workshop learned basic CAD skills and reverse-engineering of an object into a 3D model.