Nature and Modern, a natured design pencil holder made of recycled PLA

My project draws inspiration from a blend of modern and natural aesthetics. It was sparked by Lia’s blog post on balancing nature with modern design.

When thinking how I could combine this aesthetics, I asked myself: What can I create that embodies both modern style and natural elements?  My initial thought went to the recycled PLA at the ITL. The second thought was if I could design something that included trees or other aspects of nature. I began to search on google and came across this wood filament PLA. 

 

Looking into it, I found these PLA printed bowls that gave me inspiration.

Additionally, I went to ChatGPT for inspiration. Though I liked the bowl, I envisioned one that merges more organic forms, incorporating tree, vines, leaves. This would allow me to better represent the Harmoney between nature and modernity for my aesthetic.

I gave Chat a similar prompt above and it spit out this image that helped turn my idea into a visual.

This was the base inspiration for my project, however, during the process of designing it, we were given a post where we had to do the opposite of our aesthetic. For me, this was an 1800’s steel mill.

It was very rugged, no color, no nature, and definitely not modern. I really enjoyed the visual of this, so I decided to incorporate the style into my project.

I once again had ChatGPT help me. I told it that I liked the 1800s mills photo but wanted it in a nature scene. The aesthetic it suggested was “Melancholic Aesthetic,” which is similar to a gothic aesthetic in terms of colors. The photo is seen below.

With the combination of thesis aesthetic inspirations, my vision became a PLA printed pencil holder in which embodied the etching of a forest in a gloomy late fall scene for the Melancholic Aesthetics.  Furthermore, I foresaw it as having many interwoven vines, tree branches, leaves to fully embody the nature and modern Aesthetic.

The first step of my redesign was relearning SolidWorks. I initially wanted to learn how to reshape concavities for texture, as seen below. However, this tool was too advanced given my limited experience with CAD. In the future, I would like to try it.

The most important tool I learned was wrapping. It allowed me to draw a sketch that wraps around the cylinder of the pencil holder. There were techniques such as advanced 3D sweeps, but this seemed the most practical for this application.

The main issue I had with the wrap technique was having too many sketches in one area. SolidWorks as a Sofware really loves symmetry and constraints. This is quite opposite of the organic features. Because of this, it at times would struggle to recognize my true sketch and extrude the most symmetrical shape with no way to unselect it. The solution was sadly simple to say the least. It required me to limit the body of the sketch, meaning that I could not have really complex sketches such as intersecting vines or branches. Additionally, I had to do a stop-go method while sketching. This meant that I had to do a small section, close of the sketch, extrude, then go in and sketch again to ensure my sketch would be accepted and extruded by SolidWorks. This stop, go, stop, go method increase the time it took me to make this part immensely. Every branch, root, truck had to be stopped each time.

The next constraint I had was building the foreground of the image. For these aspects, I had to do a rolling sketch which meant I had to build a large landscape that wraps around the circumference of the cup. The difficultly was to not overlap or even have any open sketches as this would permanently break the drawing and cause me to go back many revisions.

I also wanted to add leaves in the foreground. As previously mentioned, SolidWorks does not like small details like veins in a leaf. Therefore, I had to break the leaves up into two separate sketches’, forging the stem in order to create it.

Simular to the leaves, I could not add feathers, or other details my bird without breaking the wrap extrude. Sadly, I had to just make it out of one single sketch, but ultimately, I believe it looked pretty good.

The area I did not succeed in the foreground was the distance prospective. In my mind I had an idea of a building off in the distance in a dark forest similar to one you may have seen in a landscape paint of a farm. With this in mind, I had chat generate an image that I was thinking of that you can see below.

As seen below, this did not go as planned. For some reason, prospective did not appear right in my CAD and it overall just looked out of place.

The final constraint I had in the fabrication process was adding texture to the wood features. For the wood trunks, I wanted to add striations like you may see in Bark. Because I could not just simply cut out lines I had in my sketch, I had to use 3-point arcs to create the striations in the bark. I tried my best to make it look irregular by varying lengths, width, and direction. Overall, I feel like this aspect turned out as well as it could.

My final attempt was to add texture to the entire pencil holder. My first attempt was to use 3D texturing inside SolidWorks. To do this, you simply drag a texture, adjust the width, direction, size, separation, and extrude height of the shape, then apply it to the part. Unfortunately, I ran out of time towards the end of this project and did not fully try this. However, as seen below, it appears very textured, and it is something I will attempt in the future.

Instead of adding a 3D feature, I settled for adding small bar strips onto the cylinder to mimic tree bark. This turned out better than I expected and gave it just the right amount of texture I was hoping for. I will add a fully revolving video later of the finished piece.

For my final description of this artifact, it is a PLA pencil holder that embodies the aesthetic of both nature and modernity. I created tree-like extrusions all over the holder, with texture being achieved through non-extrusions. It features standing trees, fallen trees, leaves, birds, mushrooms, and grass.

My final functional goal was for it to be a pencil holder for my desk, and it accomplishes that (print image pending).

My aesthetic goal was to achieve a melancholic aesthetic mixed with nature and modern design. I believe I succeeded in this. I wanted a forest scene that was late into the fall and almost felt gloomy. I think I captured this with my choice of fallen leaves, wood texture, standing trees, and rotting trees.

For my next steps, I will forgo the recycled PLA and use the wood-based PLA instead. I will then stain it to achieve my goal of a melancholic look.

Amazon.com : pla wood filament

wood bark striation – Search Images