Beer Glove Modeling Challenge Part 2: using SOLIDWORKS Industrial Designer

In part 1 of my [epic] modeling challenge I modeled a hand using SOLIDWORKS in 90 minutes so that I could design a beer glove. It… could have gone better had I allowed myself more time. However, I was excited to use SOLIDWORKS Industrial Designer to do the same.

Now, in light of the fact that I’ve been using SOLIDWORKS for about 15 years and I’ve had less than 15 hours of “stick time” on Industrial Designer, I decided to allow myself an extra 30 minutes, which ended up being used on a practice run that ended in me starting over after learning some things.

Modeling with SOLIDWORKS Industrial Designer

I started with a freeform block, 16x3x3 divisions (I wasn’t concerned with scale at this point, although I got pretty close as you’ll see at the end). I then used the Extrude Faces command to get the little bumps for fingers.

That’s supposed to be a hand?? Wait for it…

I then spent the next hour selecting faces and edges, then dragging them with the manipulator.

This is what it looked like after about an hour.

I continued for about another half hour with the thumb, which I should have modeled up differently from the start. Once again, I had modeled the hand up flat. This is because I knew that Industrial Designer has a really great tool called the Arc Bend command for this.

Start by window-selecting the points that you want to move, then select the Arc Bend command.

After about half an hour of bending the fingers (most of that was tinkering with the thumb with mixed results as you’ll see in a minute), I exported what I had to SOLIDWORKS and compared the two hands:

SOLIDWORKS model on the left, SWID on the right

Both hands Top view

Okay, so I’m no 2-hour Davinci, and in fairness, I did in the end spend about twice as much time on the SOLIDWORKS Industrial Designer hand as I did on the regular SOLIDWORKS hand. However, one cannot help but be astonished at the difference. I can now go about designing my beer glove…

…or I can just hold my beer by the neck of the bottle like a normal person.