Bunny Fidget

Description:

A cute fidget toy of a bunny that loves her family and friends, great for some entertainment while working at a desk or to keep by your bedside to wake up to.

Our Objective:

For our final project, we were assigned to make any model we had previously learned instructions for. I chose to try my hand at the fidget toy again, this time with a different shape. This model uses the offset tool frequently, so it is suggested that you are comfortable with this feature before attempting this.

Design Process:

I really love My Melody, so I decided to use this image of her as a reference for the fidget. The constraint box used as a base was an 8 cm by 5 cm rectangle, though this may need to be adjusted as needed.

Transporting the image into Solidworks onto the constraint box to trace over will make this process much easier. Adjust the image so it fills out the box, and then use Arcs to trace over the edge only. I’d recommend using as little Arcs as possible so the offsetting will have a less likely chance to make the corners grow sharp.

Delete everything except for the sketch made with Arcs

Because of the sharp corners, it is highly recommended to use the Line Splice on them and make all curved lines Tangent. Otherwise the program will have trouble making this an angled Boss Extrude.

The next step is to select the outline of your sketch and continuously offset it by 0.1 cm inwards until unable. 16 is the best number, but an even number of offsets is necessary. For me, I had to manually round the corners of the offsets with the Arc tool instead of the Line Splice tool in order for it to work.

it’s important to save here, just in case your program crashes. Select the outermost layer and create a Boss Extrude: mine were set to 1 cm for the height and 11 degrees for the angle, Blind, though this may have to be tweaked throughout the modeling in case Solidworks doesn’t register it and cannot create it.

Now turn on the sketch again and select the line after the next, then Cut Extrude this. Reverse the direction of the cut, change the options in the drop-down menu on the left from Blind to Through All – set the angle to 11 degrees if it isn’t already. 

Repeat these steps, choosing the reverse button beside the first drop-down menu, until you no longer can.

For my model, I ran into numerous issues on the step above, so I was only able to get here. I was working on this project on a time constraint. For the best experience, leave a small gap in the middle with a Cut Extrude. This will make the fidget smoother to toy around with.

Select the Mirror tool, click the largest flat surface, change the menu option to Bodies, select all (make sure Merge Solids is checked), then click the checkmark.

Design Choices:

Not many differing choices were made during the planning and actual creation process. For any recreations, it may be easier to exclude her bow from the sketch outlining in the first few steps while still keeping her recognizable silhouette. 

There’s a little sharp thing in the Solidworks model and I couldn’t find a way to remove, though it most likely won’t appear in the printed product.

Throughout the modeling process, the degrees for the angle of the Boss Extrudes and Cut Extrudes was changed. I originally had 25 degrees but I had to keep lowering it so the program would accept it. Some editing with the first couple steps might prevent this, although I wasn’t able to test this with the limited time I had to make this project.