The Results

Result 1 

The result of the first one is unsatisfactory, the top op 

                     the lid area is exceeded and there is a big gap in the 'shoulder' part 

Result 2

                                      The second result is more desirable, the skin adhere
                                      closer to the contours of the template compares to
                                      the first result

Practice

                               Using the Guillotine to cut the aluminium sheet, here we are using 
                               the 1mm 5005 aluminium 

                               Once we got the desirable size, use the mark pen to roughly draw 

                               the shape of your model 

                              

                               THINK CAREFULLY if you don't want to waste your material!

                                          Cut off the irrelevant area by using this large shear

                               Use the aviation snip to modify the edge. Here are two types of
                               snips which are right-hand and left-hand, it is very important to
                               choose the right type which suits the curve you want

                               Use the slip rollers to curve the sheet as much as possible, the 

                               curve should be covered around the body of the model in order

                               to avoid a gap between your model and aluminium sheet 

Check the sheet with your model to see which area need to be modified

Use the T-Dolly to bend the edge

JUST BE PATIENT! 

The English Wheels can make the metal thinner and wide, it also smooths the skin  

Laser Cutting

Once the setting of the model is done, export it as a PDF file, change the color(red) and line-weight(0.001mm) in Adobe Illustrator

Here is the 3.4mm plywood laser cutting file

                                Because I failed 4 times in laser cutting(wrong file, wrong material
                                and wrong thickness) and it waste a lot of time and money, so I decide
                                to have a backup 1.2mm white cardboard file just in case something goes
                                wrong again!

3mm plywood model

Top view

1.2mm cardboard

Top view

 Fortunately, nothing goes wrong this time. However, the cardboard is a little bit unstable due to its thickness, so plywood is the best choice in my case.

123D Make

                                               The model generated by the 123D Make

                               Select a construction technique, trying to find the best technique
                               for the model. Here is the stack slices

                              Here is the interlocked slices, the red color means there are some 

                              issues with your model, it might be too much notches or disconnected 

                              joints which would result in a instability

                              My final choice is the radical slices as it keeps the shape of the top

                              lid and save the material compares to the stacked slices. The slices 

                              can be adjusted by the panel pointed by the arrow 

1. Modify the exist template or create a new one through the manufacturing settings panel

2. Adjust the three parameters to match the laser cutting machine and the material you choose for 

Tips: if you choose 3mm plywood and interlocked method, better to set the thickness more than 3mm in order to reduce the friction and assemble them easily. In my case, after 3 times failure in laser cutting, finally I found that the 3.4mm thickness fits my model best 

123D Catch

By using the 123D Catch on Iphone, the navigating wheel can tells you in what angle you should take the photos. However, sometimes it takes a very long time to finalize the model, so better to finalize it under a good network connection.

Just upload to your Autodesk account then you can download your model and modify it on your PC version 123D Catch. The icon pointed by the yellow arrow is the move tool, so you can move around to see your model.

Using the lasso tool to clean the background, selected area will be marked as red. Delete the background as clean as possible in order to generate a good model in 123D Make.

  Here is my cleanest model. Although some of the bottom part is missing, we can fix it on the 123D Make by using the shrinkwrap tool.

The Object

As an architecture student, lots of the our time was spent on creating a physical model, Hence, the Glue-ALL came to my mind immediately as it helped me a lot when I was modelling.