Science and Technology Learning Standard of the Week
Troubleshooting:
In my own words, troubleshooting is defined as the ability to look at a situation or a problem, apply a strategy and then fix the situation or problem. Throughout my years in the CAD program, I have yet to come across a better example of troubleshooting than the final animation for my tree house project. Over the past few days, I have been trying to animate and render my tree house but to no avail. The computer continues to freeze every time I run Bongo because the animation is too complicated and large. To solve this problem, I have been advised to cut my animation into 5 different parts and animate them separately. This method should definitely work.
Research and Development:
The research and development stage of the project always takes place before the project begins. A person must research the design and specs of the object before he or she actually goes about creating it. Prior to the beginning of my tree house project, I spent an entire class period looking at specs and different designs of tree houses that I thought looked good. I took the stairs of one design, the roof of another, and so on and so forth. When I was ready to begin, I already had the general idea of what to design so I didn’t have to waste any more time brainstorming.
Invention and Innovation:
Invention is a term used to describe something brand new that has been created or implemented. Innovation is the introduction of a new object or idea into a project. Now these terms seem kind of hard to understand but they both mean basically the same thing; the creation and involvement of your own work into your own project. Within the tree house, which was an invention in itself, I made many innovations to make the overall design better. For example, the two custom pools I added on various levels of the tree house were products of my imagination that I put into reality within my tree house.
Experimentation:
This is probably the easiest term to define and to give an example of. To experiment is to try new ideas and methods to solve a problem or get to a solution. Throughout my years in CAD, I have been confronted with many challenges that I have had to use experiments to get out of; one example is within my tree house. While I was designing the back left deck with the swimming pool, I ran into a problem, it was a slanted deck that almost looked like a rhombus. The problem was, how was I going to get the railing system around the deck if the original square line I used didn’t work? Well, I thought long and hard and the first method I tried was to use the full square line and attempt to cut it to make it fit so I could pipe it. This method failed epically. The method that finally turned out to be the right way was simply using the line feature and making a line around my rhombus. After much experimentation, my tree house is finally finished.
