Apartment Render

In middle school, I took a class modeling in Autodesk Inventor, and have made sure I have a free student membership ever since then. In high school, I borrowed a 3D printer from my dad's friend, where I would design things I felt would make my daily life more efficient, or find an existing model online, depending on the complexity.

Recently, IU Luddy retired Ultimaker 2+ 3D printers from their makerspace, they were sent to IU Surplus to be sold to the public. IU Surplus was charging $400/printer. For context, this printer was released in 2016 for a price tag of $2,500, not a bad deal. I saw it on the IU Surplus facebook page, sent it to my dad, and he told me to get one (along with a text saying not to send him cool stuff for sale because he'll buy it on the spot). I've designed and printed various things, such as a Mac Mini wall mount, a laptop stand modeled after mountains as a nod for my love of skiing, pegboard hooks, and several other useful things.

3D printing aside, CAD design in Autodesk Inventor proved to very helpful to me this summer, probably the only thing I still use frequently from middle school. For my senior year of college, I moved into a new apartment with some friends I met freshman year. Coming from a 1-bed apartment to a 4-bed, it was roughly the same cost in rent, but my bedroom was smaller, and I didn't want to move all my belongings over, only to find some won't fit, and have to take them all back home. To solve this problem, I modeled the floor plan in Autodesk Inventor. The leasing company didn't have the floor plan dimensions online or easily accessible to send to tenants, so I took a screenshot of the undimensioned floor plan online, set the door width to 36 inches, the general interior door standard, and modeled around that.

Now that I had the floor plan dimensions and the general room model constructed, I needed to start modeling my belongings. I did this over the summer when everything was still set up at my old apartment, not to rummage through my garage moving things to get dimensions. Once I had all my furniture modeled, next came the fun part, arranging my room. The side benefit of digitally arranging a future room layout is the ease it takes to move furniture around. As you can imagine, it is alot easier to move your mouse 3 inches to the right and click a button than it is to physcially move and turn a 50lb bed.

To the right are the renderings Autodesk Inventor created, each took about 3 hours to process. I am very impressed with the detail it gave, especially with reflections from the TV and monitors.