Finished Product

My tutorial is now finished, and the result is favorable. All that remains is to do some final touch-up work on the appearance of the powerpoint.

Next on the agenda is my Personal Statement; the writing of which will be no easy task. It needs to be 2000 words and address all the steps I took to get here in depth. It will be a great relief when it is finished.

Gaining Momentum

My project seems to finally be taking shape. I know exactly what I need to do to finish it and feel that it is within my ability. My supervisor and I have decided to cut out making a CO2 car and instead are focusing more on the tutorial aspect. He taught me how to use hyperlinks on PowerPoint so that I can design the tutorial like a web site, with links to different pages, or in this case, slides. While this is not what I originally had expected my project to be, I am glad that it now seems to have an end.

Hitting a Roadblock

The program I have been attempting to learn, AliasDesign, has been cryptic to say the least. The tutorials provided little help, demonstrating the most rudimentary actions. To make matters worse, the program is not compatible with Windows. Needless to say, I was not reluctant to convert to the Windows equivalent (AutoDesk Inventor), which, incidentally, is a much more intuitive program. I expect to make much greater headway on my project using this software.

Downloaded Inventor AliasDesign

It took some time, but my mentor found out how to download Inventor for my Mac. I'm surprised by its complexity; I am used to much simpler software. It now seems that my mentor was right in stating that the most difficult part of my project would be learning the program. It seems that making a tutorial would be the most useful product to the community, but I am unsure of my ability to create one. As it is, I barely know how to do the most rudimentary tasks on Inventor, much less teach others how to do so. Regardless, it seems that my top priority should be to learn how to use the software. Otherwise, there is no way to continue the project.

Meeting With Mentor

Today I spent time after school getting to know my mentor and discussing possible project options. I have already decided on the subject of my project: the making of a CO2 car, but I still need to determine how it is relevant to real world applications. I have several options, but I haven't decided which will be the best for my project. I can:

• Create a tutorial on how to use the software involved in making my car
• Explain how my car demonstrates the principles of physics
• Use my project to show the steps involved in the design process

My second task will be to learn how to use the Inventor program with which I will design my car. My mentor tells me it is a complicated program but I am confident that I will be able to learn how to use it before long.