Manufacturable Outdoor Desk
O
ne of my favorite projects to date! Given one wood board approximately 10" by 60" and a few weeks, we were instructed to create a stool/seat that is easily re-manufacturable. I took the freedom of this assignment and ran with it, sketching various combinations of boards and struts. My final concept emerged after a week of ideation as an "outdoor desk" that allowed a relaxed near-the-ground seating position with a small surface to assist in low-stakes activites such as sketching and/or reading with a secondary lower surface to store a morning coffee and a few books, protected by a board to prevent spillage.
Contribution: All Original Work
Timeline: 3 Weeks
Material: Poplar Wood
Date Completed: April 2024
Association: Carnegie Mellon University School of Design
Final renders generated in KeyShot.
Design Process
Step 2 — Created a rapid chipboard prototype to test the interlocking motion.
Step 3 — Created an Adobe Illustrator 2D cad and extruded it in SolidWorks to create the drawing seen below.
Step 6 — I accepted the defeat of my previous idea and went back to the drawing board, sketching more possible concepts that ignored the possibility of a stool that turned into two. What emerged was the concept that would lead to my final, explained further in the introduction paragraph at the top of this page!
Step 7 — My initial concept (at right) and my revised concept (at left), both generated in SolidWorks, rendered in KeyShot, and laser-cut into acrylic prototypes.
Step 8 — I developed a series of dimensioned SolidWorks drawings to make construction much easier and achieve the project's goal of creating a re-manufacturable product, followed by some KeyShot renderings to present to my professors for feedback.
Construction Process
My SolidWorks drawings to assist my construction process.
Final constructed rectilinear seat!
Final presentation board, guiding viewers through my design and construction process.
Project Takeaways
F
rom beginning to end, this project provided some excellent practice of my entire skillset between sketching, prototyping, engineering, woodworking, and rendering. I am proud of my end result and my documentation along the way, something I felt had been missing in past projects. This is a product I would actually use, and to have easy-to-follow guidelines from the SolidWorks drawings is a powerful feeling.
This project made me feel like I'm ready to take on much greater projects the following semester, and I can't wait to get started. If I were to do the project again, I wish I created a full-scale prototype using cardboard of my final concept before producing it, as it was smaller in real life than I imagined it via my drawings and renderings. Even though my documentation and sketches were stronger in this project, I still strive for improvement.