3D Printed Object - Napkin Holder

I decided to make a napkin holder with designs on the side. I decided to make a napkin holder because I have been needing one for the longest time but did not want one that was heavy or would take up a lot of space when I moved out of my apartment. I designed sharks on the sides as well as bubbles to be on theme with the ocean.

All my sketching was done inside of SolidWorks. As I was sketching, I realized I did not use the exact sizes I wanted for the final print, so I had to scale the whole thing after designing the whole thing. This was a difficult process since there were multiple parts being printed which meant I had to make sure the scaling and dimensions were correct or the pieces would not fit together after printing. After sketching and making the sketches 3D, I was able to create STL files with the design and use the STL files to print my design. 

Since this was my first time 3D printing anything, I was worried I would have to reprint the design multiple times but I did not need to. The sizing of the sides were a bit on the smaller side, leaving a lot of the top of the napkins to hang over the tops of the holder. but they are the correct length for the napkins I have. The base is also a bit small for the napkins I have, so overall making the design a little longer and taller might be a good decision to implement on in future iterations. I designed this with usability in mind and it does a great job holding my napkins even though it is a bit small.

Reflection​​​​​​​

Some challenges I faced while creating this prototype was figuring out how thick I wanted the napkin holder to be. Since we had limited resources and a timeframe, I did not want to spend too much time on one iteration and it to fail printing mid-way. I also did not want to make it too thin, in case it would be too flimsy and unable to hold the napkins up. I decided to go with a 1/32 inch thickness for most of the sides and the base, but added some thickness on the shark to create depth in the design. I am pretty happy with the outcome since the shark is easily visible and adds some structure to the sides of the napkin holder. An aspect I really enjoyed within the whole process was CAD-ing the actual parts of the napkin holder. I have previous experience with CAD and the SolidWorks software, so being able to design and actually hold my design was a lot of fun and rewarding. Although I was familiar with SolidWorks, I still ran into some technical issues since it has been a while since I've used the application but overall was a good exercise to brush up on my CAD skills.