The CAD Model

I decided to start this project by drawing up the Tumbller on CAD as I’m still waiting for the actual Tumbller to arrive with me at the moment. It took me a few days to get it done but I am really happy with how it turned out.

The program I used for this was SOLIDWORKS which, for the most part, I have always found useful and enjoyable to use. I will most likely have to change some elements of this assembly because the Tumbller hasn’t arrived yet and I don’t have the full details and dimensions. This is only really the first draft of the CAD although I’m hoping I won’t have to change too much. The only two components that I didn’t build myself are the ultrasonic sensor and the arduino nano. I downloaded these from grabcad as they are much more complex parts to draw up in detail and if I have to change things around I’d rather not have to scrap something really complex. I may end up doing out my own versions of these two components once the Tumbller does arrive.

I also did out two renders of the CAD assembly using PhotoView360 on SOLIDWORKS which always makes it look whole lot more like the real thing.

Finally, I made a really short (30 second) video on a few of the steps involved in putting the assembly together. I hope it will give you some sort of insight into how this sort of thing works if you have never used SOLIDWORKS before or if you are just interested in the process. I have never done anything like this before so apologies in advance for the shabby video editing and the background music.

I hope you enjoyed reading about this first stage in my Tumbller project. There will be a lot more to come. If you’d be interested in more regular updates in what I’m working on or would like to know when my next blog posts come out, please follow my engineering Instagram page. There is a link to it in my bio here, at the top of the page.

That’s all for now, thanks.