In this section, we're going to put our knowledge to the test and design something. And we're going to design a solar yard light. So one of the first things that we might do when we have an idea would be to make a simple sketch of our idea, maybe a hand sketch. So we're going to design a solar yard light, we know that we would need a solar cell somewhere in this probably on top, we're going to need a ground steak and a light bulb, maybe a small LED and then a clear glow of some kind of a clear globe around the bulb. So we already have a general idea of some of the components we would need. The solar cell will also need a battery to store the energy ground stake a clear glow for the light to shine through a light bulb, and possibly a small circuit board which could add some control to this, where we might be able to turn it on and off at different times.

So again, all we have at this point is simply just an idea, we maybe draw a quick hand sketch of our idea. And we have a general idea of the components that we would need for this. So a huge advantage of CAD programs for designing and starting to use them for designs at home would be that we can use it to think in 3d or we can use it to what I would call to speed model. So if you have an idea, and you know the general components that you need, you can quickly pull them into your CAD model. And you can get an idea of the relative sizes of the different components relative to each other, you can start to visualize it in 3d. And we should be able to do this pretty quickly.

And that's because we can either draw really simple parts or just simplified parts that are generally of the proper size. Or there are now CAD databases on the internet which we can pull in parts from there are definitely Millions of different CAD parts that are already online which we can freely download, most likely over a billion different CAD models. So we can almost we can get just about any part that we might want that's already drawn in CAD, which we can download, pull into our model to be able to quickly think and visualize in 3d. So again, we would call it speed modeling. And let's go ahead and do that for this idea that we have of a solar lawn steak. Okay, so we've jumped into fusion 360.

Let's go ahead and first of all, save this document. Let's call it solar steak one and hit save. So first of all, we know that we're going to need a solar cell. So let's go ahead and bring one of those in. What we can do is we can go to Google or Go to a search engine, we're going to need to figure out the general size of the solar cell that we would need, the solar cell is going to need to power a light bulb, maybe an LED. A good place to look might be Amazon.

So we could go to Amazon type in solar cell and see what comes up. You can see that small solar cells are commonly sold with just two wires coming off of them. And they can be used for a lot of small electronics parts. Okay, so after some searching, I was able to find a solar cells that should be close to what we're looking for. And from the description, you should be able to get a size and we can see that it's 50 by 50 by three. So let's go ahead and quickly modeled that up.

To start a new part, I want to go to assemble a new component. And I'm going to label it solar cell and hit OK. You can see that it's activated over in the tree. And let's go ahead and quickly model a solar cell. I can go on in this plan and create a sketch. And we're just going to create a rectangle and the size we got a sketch sketch dimension, we know that it's going to be 50 millimeters I can actually type 50 mm even though we are in inches set up in inches in the settings of fusion 360 right now, so I can type in 50 millimeters. Make this 50 millimeters as well.

We can stop sketch. And now we can go to sketch and extrude this by three millimeters. We have a general idea of a solar cell here. So next we're going to need a light bulb, most definitely in this document. So let's go ahead and try and find a light bulb. We can see if a database would have an LED for us a good place to go is grab CAD.

So I can go ahead and search for let's say LED. And something like this should be pretty close to what we're looking for. And we need to make sure that we're going to be able to bring in the 3d model with the proper file type a lot of different file types that will work for us. So in this case, we have a SolidWorks file type, a step file type and both of those will work step STP or STP is a very common file type for 3d models. Which in almost every case be able to work for you. And SolidWorks also works a fusion 360 is able to import SolidWorks file SolidWorks again is the very popular CAD program.

So let's go ahead and download these files. And we'll sign in to create an account it is free and again, click download files. And now let's pull those files into fusion 360. So we can upload them into whatever folder that you would want. So let's upload select files, and we go to downloads. Typically, you're going to download a zip file so let's extract the zip file.

To the same folder, we can just x that out. We open the file and we can either grab the step file or I can grab all of the SolidWorks files. So let's just go ahead and grab led complete I assume that's the final assembly. Or we could pull all of the documents in but let's just go with LED, complete, hit open and upload. Close that and now we should be able to pull our LED in. First of all, I want to make sure that the assembly is activated here before I pull it in That's to make sure that when I pull the LED in a new component or a new part is created.

So let's pull it in. And it looks like it pulled up okay in 3d and I hit OK. If I try and drag it right now, you can see that it broke into two. A lot of the times if I hit Undo, I can bring it back. It does that because the fusion 360 is not pulling in the information on the joints or the you know the previous assemblies that it was within and so what I can do is just create a rigid group I can right click and create a rigid group and hit OK. And it should stay together now as it does. Also I might need to you can see this chain here I might need to break its link with any other previous files or bodies that have Part of, so I can right click and choose break link.

Now I should be good to go with this LED. Let's see how big this LED is. If I go to inspect measure, I can click on different items, let's get an idea of the diameter here. diameter is point 147. That is a pretty small LED. What we can do, let's activate this component.

To just get closer to the size of an LED. We might want. Let's just scale the entire LED. So we have it activated. I can go to modify scale wants me to select the entities I'll just use a window and drag over the top of it. And let's scale uniformly by say three and hit OK. You can see the entire led group Now if I go to inspect, measure and check the diameter, the diameter is around point 442 rather than a scale of three, let's go ahead and edit that.

And let's go a scale of two and hit OK. And now if I measure it, let's see, we have point 294, which is close to the size of an LD led we might be looking for. So we have two different parts. I'm also going to need a ground stake and I could quickly draw ground stake assemble new component. Let's type ground stake and hit OK. Let's go to sketch create sketch. Click on one of the planes Let's just make a circular ground steak, maybe have a diameter of around three quarters of an inch point seven, five could work. And then let's extrude that and let's extrude it, maybe it's going to be seven inches long.

Something like that. Now I have three parts, get an idea of what this might look like. And we can generally drag these parts into place. It's LED is a little bit hard to see. I know that I'm also going to need a battery or a rechargeable battery. And so instead of drawing a battery, we can see if we Grab CAD would have a battery for us.

And I've checked and the solar cell that we found will match with a double A battery. So let's go to grab cat and see if we can find a double A battery just to make this easier for us again. If I type double A battery and hit enter, looks like here's a double A battery right here. And I have a step file and a fusion 360 file so this will definitely work for us. Let's go ahead and download those files. And it's downloaded I go back into fusion 360 go to upload, select files.

And you can see the battery here. I extract all the files from the zip file into the same folder. Now I can open up the battery files and it looks like we have a fusion 360 file which is perfect for us. So let's double click on that and hit upload close make sure that the full assembly is activated dragon your battery looks like it's showing up properly in 3d. Hit OK. Let's just go ahead and break this link right away. And that seemed to work and also let's right click and create a rigid group Yes, the batteries selected, hit OK. And now we have a battery that we can move around in our CAD file.

So let's right click, move this batteries to where we might want it, we might position it on its side. Let's put it at 90 degrees. And then I'm probably going to want the solar cell on the top of this design so I can pull the battery underneath that somewhere. And I know that my wires are going to run from my solar cell to the battery and then the battery is going to power the LED so they might go in this order. Let's take the LED and flip it around 180 degrees and hit OK. And then I know that I'm going to need some kind of a cover over the top of the