rocket with a pencil sharpener inside it

Design Statement

You and your partners need to make four designs and troubleshoot any errors you encounter while also providing feedback on initial design choices and plans.

Objective

For this project, my partners (@reagannwray1_2915686 and @divyakh2028_2915679) and I had to come up with our own theme and create four designs based on that theme. We chose a rocket as one of our design focuses and collaborated on modeling it together in SolidWorks.

1. Revolving the Rocket Body

Sketched a triangular profile of the rocket nose on the Front Plane.

Used the Revolve feature around a central axis to create the top removable part of the rocket.

Initially ran into an issue because the sketch was not a closed figure; fixed it by adding connecting lines.

2. Loft Cut on the Rocket Top

Created a new reference plane 2.2 cm above the top plane and 3 cm down from the rocket cap.

Sketched two rectangles:

Top of cap: 1.5 cm × 1.75 cm

On the new plane: 1.75 cm × 0.6 cm

Applied Loft Cut between the rectangles with their left edges aligned vertically.

3. Creating the Rocket Base (Cylinder)

Sketched an 8 cm diameter circle on the Top Plane.

Extruded the circle to a height of 7.5 cm to form the rocket body.

Sketched another circle with a 7 cm diameter on the top of the base and used Extrude Cut to hollow it out to a depth of 7 cm.

4. Side Cutouts in the Base

Sketched a rectangle 2.5 cm x 0.5 cm on the side of the cylinder using the Front Plane.

Used Extrude Cut to create a slot for wing placement.

The cutout was smart-dimensioned to fit the wings exactly.

5. Circular Pattern of Cutouts

Created a central axis through the cylinder (intersection of two planes).

Used Circular Pattern to replicate the side cutout four times (aligned to the Front, Right, Back, and Left planes).

This step was completed without issues.

6. Wing Design and Patterning

Used the Spline Tool on the Right Plane to sketch one fin with smooth curves.

Extruded the fin shape 0.4 cm using the Midplane option.

Applied Circular Pattern to repeat the wing design four times around the rocket body.

7. Thruster Nozzles (De Laval Shape)

Sketched a drafted circle and extruded it outward to begin the nozzle.

Traced the realistic De Laval nozzle shape using a reference image.

Deleted the top and bottom halves of the nozzle for cleaner geometry.

Created three new planes below the rocket base:

First plane: 1 cm down

Second plane: 1.5 cm down

Third plane: 2 cm down

Used Loft to create the nozzle between these planes.

Unmerged the lofted result to prevent zero-thickness geometry errors.

During circular patterning of the nozzles, alignment with existing holes was off and needed adjustment.

8. Final Adjustments to the nozzle

Added a cap to the top of the nozzle using Boss Extrude.

Refined the shape using Revolve and applied Fillets for smoother edges.

Re-applied Circular Pattern to repeat the nozzle.

Moved some parts slightly to improve appearance and spacing.

Added color to the final model for visual enhancement.

9. Window Design

Created a new plane near the upper section of the rocket body.

Used two Extrude features to create the full window cutout.

created small circles on the outside of the window and circular patterned it

This step was straightforward and worked as intended.

Troubleshooting and Errors

The initial revolve sketch wasn’t a closed figure, which caused an error. This was fixed by adding connecting lines.

During the loft cut, rectangles needed to be aligned on the left edge to work properly.

If the wings were printed attached to the rocket, they would have required supports. This was solved by cutting slots and printing the wings separately.

Lofting the thruster nozzle caused a zero-thickness geometry error. It was fixed by unmerging the result.

Circular patterning the nozzles didn’t align with the holes and needed adjustments.

Some features had to be moved or resized to improve appearance and avoid overlapping.

Thruster caps were added later after the design looked incomplete.

Final results

we printed three parts SEPERATELY, the base, the top, and the three thrusters

it tuned out good but… there was one issues

the thrusters were too big and didn't fit

so we decided to carve it out and make the hole bigger

and we got this

Final design choices of the 3-D printout 

the only main problem was lying in the fact that we made a miscalculation in our smart dimension and made the holes for the rocket thrusters too small which stopped us from being able to properly fit the thrusters onto it

we can fix this by simply changing the dimensions of the hole and just make it 0.25 cm bigger so that it can be glued on top to fit properly within the circle

Demonstration

it works!!

Group picture