Shapeways Ring Project

Designing the Ring

Designing my Ring:
At this point in the semester I was pretty tired out and ready for Christmas Break, but we had one last big project. To design a ring, and have it ordered and delivered from Shapeways. I had some difficulty figuring out how to make the ring, and how to correctly use Flow with the right dimensions.    I think figuring out the dimensions of the ring was the most difficult for me, I would always get confused when starting a new ring from before. I was getting Artist's "Block," so I went home and looked at my collection of rings. I liked the rings that had gems in the center of them, as well as this one ring I had that was wider in the center of the ring. It had a piped design all around it and gave off a nice texture and shape. I wanted to recreate this in my model, but still make it unique with the different style of piping. I started out with a circle with the correct dimensions, and I made an arc on one side of it and mirrored it to the other side. I then added 36 points to each circle, this would come in handy later. I then used the arc command, and connected to one point on the side, then on the other side, and then in the center. This created a really nice design to go all the way around the ring. I started with 1.1 and piped the main portion of the top of the ring. I then went down to just 1 and did the sides. Then going down to .95, then .90, and finally, .85. This helped make the ring slimmer as it went down in size. Lastly, I added a cylinder and extruded it to both side of the ring. When differenced, it added a flat edge to the inside of the ring band. I then uploaded a rose gold color to add to the materials page, and then place on the ring. I upped the gloss a lot and when I went to render it, the ring looked beautiful and had this metallic finish to it. I added tile for the wall background, sort of thinking of a bathroom background. For the floor, I just did a wooden table, thinking of a dresser the ring might sit on. This was probably one of the best projects I did in the class and I am really proud of it. 

What Could I Have Done Better?

I struggled with the wall thickness of the piping around the ring. I had to go back and play around with it for a bit to alternate the piping thickness. Shapeways wouldn't let me order my ring until the pipes were thicker. Going back and changing the thickness all around was a tedious task, and took me a while but once I finally got all of the check marks on Shapeways, I was happy. 

Aspects of the Project I was Happy With:

I was really happy with how the renderings turned out. The photos were extremely appealing in my eyes, and I was really happy with the rose gold finish I chose for the ring. I think I chose an overall very nice design also and added background materials to make it look like the ring was in a bathroom or bedroom sitting on a nice wooden desk. When I presented the project, everyone including the professor really liked my work. I was very proud of the project and remembering blushing sitting in the chair presenting. 

What Would I do Differently in the Future?

In the future, I would again work more towards not procrastinating as much and being organized with my plans. Being pretty tired and wanting the semester to be over already, I struggled with choosing a design, but then remembered I had a collection of rings in my jewelry box I could just look at, and it turned out to give me inspiration. I would also be more aware of how to size and use the dimensions command on Rhino. 

What did I Learn from the Project?
I learned how to use the Flow command in this project, but then turned to piping my design which is another command I hadn't used as much. I learned how to work with piping dimensions, what's considered too thick, or too thin. I learned that you can use boolean difference with a cylinder to make a flat edge of the ring band on the inside of it. I took away from the project to take as many renderings from different perspectives as possible.