The Ultimate Design Challenge

For this project we had to choose a building or object and then design it in a CAD program. We had to then figure out the surface area to volume ratio of that object. It would make sense to do this to something where the volume to surface area ratio mattered like a car or a pool and so I decided to make it a bridge. I chose to make it a bridge because with bridges you want to use the least materials for the most road.

At the start of the project I didn’t know how to use CAD programs and I also had largely forgotten how to calculate cylinder area and surface area so I had to re-learn the formulas and also learn how to use the CAD program. At around the middle of the project I had learned more or less everything and all I had to do was complete the bridges I had made. Then around the end I had finished more or less all of the bridge. The thing was that we had to make calculations for all of the materials in my bridges and I had not been making the calculations as I was making my shapes which meant I had a big load of work ahead of me. But I did the work although it was boring and frustrating because of how hard it is to get the dimensions of the shapes. But through that I still did it and got the calculations done. Before I had done the calculations I had brainstormed what I wanted to do for the project, and here is what I brainstormed.

What I did was, on the top brainstorm ideas of what I wanted to do and on the bottom, white down all of the formulas that I was going to need later when I had made my bridge.

Now onto the final part, the bridge. For this project I made two bridges. The first was a pretty standard bridge and so was the second. Because my bridges were do standard I decided to take the first bridge and make it be longer and more extravagant. It turned out well and looked much cooler.

Here is the first bridge

Here is the second bridge

Tell me in the comments which one you found better!

It’s time for the Math and my approach towards it, along with how I chose the shapes. For most of the shapes I chose rectangular prisms which you can most likely see all throughout the bridges. Because I used so many rectangular prisms I decided to get some variation throughout the shape and connect the poles on either side with cylinders. I also made the black bars chick are supposed to signify ropes be cylinders. I wanted to also put triangles into the build but I didn’t because there aren’t any place for triangles on the bridges that I made. All in all I think I chose quantity over quality on the bridges, especially the first one and more or less made them totally out of prisms.