Brian Aliasghar/Jose Garay ME186 L 10.14.

2011 Midterm Project Writeup Upon first inspection of the part we had to reverse engineer, it seemed simple enough. It was only until we began to actually analyze and take measurements of the part that we realized the modeling of said part would not be an easy few step process. Making measurements of the part was self-explanatory and we were able to get all the lengths and radii quite quickly thanks to our digital calipers and the provided tools. However, during all of the sketching, we were ignoring the elephant in the corner: the actual modeling of the part in SolidWorks. There was one thing that we both learned during the modeling process and that is that making models of parts on the software is very frustrating. We hit various speed bumps all throughout our road to completion. And a couple of times, we actually had to go back and undo a certain feature because we realized that another feature had to come before it. But part of the learning process is making mistakes and having to go back and fix them and thus, what would take a professional a few moments to complete, took us many days to accomplish. We used pretty much what we already learned from the lab book to achieve our model. From doing circular patterns to using the hole wizard to using the dynamic mirror function, this part made us remember a lot of material which we practiced during the lab homework assignments. And like all challenges, we feel a sense of accomplishment with the completion of this project and are awaiting our chance to be challenged again.