Week 3: UPS Needs to get their "stuff" together

Alright, I'm going to put this as succinctly as I can.
I hate shipping.

This is what I do when I think of shipping.
Not really. My desk is against a wall.
But you get the idea.

I really, really, really hate shipping.

Because it's slow, and annoying, and seems to be acting for the sole purpose of infuriating me.

Now, I don't know if its UPS, or USPS, or Fedex, or whatever. But whoever is shipping my parts, please HURRY UP!

If any of you read my first blog, you'll remember that I said I enjoy building things. I really do.

Unfortunately, a house cannot be built without bricks (translation, I need those parts because I'm getting antsy from "not building a quadcopter syndrome")

Even better, the website I ordered from has no way of tracking my order. It just says "shipped". So helpful. My packages could be in Hong Kong, or 20 minutes away from my doorstep. Maybe they're in Paris, taking in the sights. For all I know, they're buried under a pile of plastic bags in the great pacific garbage patch. I don't know. All I DO know is that they aren't here.

If I have to go swimming in this mess to get my parts, then goshdarnit I will.

On the brighter side, computers aren't quite so stupid and complicated. They make much more sense. 

(Translation: yay technology! Humans suck)

(Sub-translation: CAD model is coming together)

Basically, the CAD model of the quadcopter is moving along quite nicely. We have almost all of the individual parts mocked up. Admittedly, since we are newbies to CAD, there are some things a little (*COUGH A LOT COUGH*) more complicated than we can manage. So Pratik and I have had to substitute some "minor" parts with simplified objects. 

Only one small issue remains. We can't actually figure out how all of the parts fit together, until we HAVE THE G#%*!#*&!#%!#!*@#&!#*$&!*@!& PARTS. (Excuse my language. Or lack thereof)

So while we have the individual parts, as well as the frame, we can't quite assemble things in the computer model.

Getting as far as we have however, was not such an easy task. As Pratik and I are both novices, we spent a lot of time learning how to CAD, rather than actually doing anything with a tangible product.

The Autodesk Inventor website (the software we are using), has been invaluable in helping us with our model. They have a very helpful set of tutorial files (which, be warned, have a a huge file size).

In addition, a very long series of youtube videos from a couple different users have aided us greatly.

At the end of the day, we can produce some very nice objects, such as this one.

Precious....... my precious

I'm gonna be honest here, that piece was Pratik. He understands CAD much better than I do.

I usually just spend an hour looking up various errors, before I flip a table over in rage.

Hopefully I'll be able to contribute more to the actual building part of the project. Once the 

!@#*&%$!#@$!*&**&%$@$$@ parts get here. (I abuse grawlix, I know.)

So in summary: shipping sucks, reading up on how to CAD, CAD is hard, shipping still sucks.

Exciting week right?

Sources used:

usa.autodesk.com/

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL428287FEFDCCAE1D

Also see: (they don't suck, unlike shipping)

brycesong.blogspot.com/

wissahickoncompliments.blogspot.com/

theartofwarsc2.blogspot.com/