Overview of caddy parts and project approach

- Now that you've set up the project file and you're ready to begin modeling parts, let's take a moment to look at the individual parts that make up the caddy design. I begin the design process by sketching each part. So I had a general idea of the shape, form, and dimensions. You should have these sketches that I generated in a folder called Exercise Files under Chapter Two, Design Sketches. If you open each of those sketches, you'll see just a general thumbnail, quick drawing of each part so that you could explore the shape, the size, the form of each of the parts.

You don't have to be a professional illustrator necessarily to do this type of small thumbnail sketching. All you need to do is draw the part to the best of your ability and add notes and necessary annotations. Sketching is really a useful way and quick way to record your ideas of the moment and to brainstorm various renditions of your design. I'll close these sketches and then I'll go to a document inside the design sketches called CAD design specs and this'll provide cleaner, more technical version of each part as a drawing of each part.

We'll begin our project in the part environment by drawing the caddy base. The first thing you'll notice about the base is that it has a series of holes in the bottom of it and that's to accept the ball feet. You'll notice also on the top of the caddy base, it actually has a series of holes as well which will accept the ring supports which in turn hold the tumblers. The next part that we'll model will be the ball foot. We'll use the revolve command to generate that. We'll also generate the tumbler using the loft command.

The ring support will be a fun way to learn the sweep and pattern commands. And finally we'll use the mirror command to model the caddy arm. A final note as we move through the creation of each part, feel free to modify or add your own customization to each of these parts. However, if you're really new to Inventor, I recommend that you stick to the design provided in this project to avoid any issues that could arise from customizing the caddy design. Now, on to modeling our first part in Inventor.