Projects

This is where I will talk about my various projects. This includes home improvement, woodworking, tayloredtruth.com, robotics, and more.

Sunday, July 30, 2006

Coffee Table Design

Once we had the ottomans built, we had to decide on a table design. E and I had talked about several but I had a real hard time picturing the one she liked most so I looked for drawing programs that would help. I stumbled on POV-Ray, a ray tracing program with which people can make some amazing images. I figured if people could make such incredibly realistic images, that I could pull off something representative of our table designs. Here are a couple of designs:

table design in POV-Raytable design in POV-Ray
Ottoman in POV-Ray

I don't remember but I think those may have been my designs which is why they are not as good as the final product. ;-) Of course, how could I possibly visualize the finished product without a simulated ottoman? Okay, at this point your thinking I have way too much time on my hands, which is not entirely untrue, but really it is not nearly as hard as it may look. I think I only spent a week or so working on POV-Ray, which is not bad considering I had never heard of it when I started.

Anyway, the final design is shown below with and without the ottomans. It was very helpful to have the 3D model of the table because not only did it help me see what E was talking about but it helped us tweak the design. Yes, believe it or not, it wasn't perfect from the start. For instance, I added the center piece so that it wouldn't just fall over. Also, we used the program to help us decide how thick the wood and aluminum rods should be. I'll talk about the construction and show you the finished project soon.

table design in POV-Raytable design in POV-Ray

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