I.D.E.A. Competition

By Ross C. (Sandwich)

On March 9th our class, Drafting and Design, went to Waubonsee Community College to compete in the I.D.E.A. regional competition. I.D.E.A. is the Illinois Drafting Educators Association and it is a competition where high school students compete in a number of different drafting related competitions against other students from other schools. The different competitions offered are: Introductory board, Introductory CAD, 3D CAD modeling, 3D assembly modeling, Machine CAD, Architectural board, Architectural 2D CAD, and Architectural 3D CAD. Each student from our class had the choice to choose which competition they wanted to compete in. Students from our class that placed top 3 in their competition are: Brandon Kramer, Somonauk High School, 2nd place, 3D CAD modeling Ross Campbell, Sandwich High School, 2nd place, Architectural 2D CAD Robert Manley, Sandwich High School, 2nd place, Architectural 3D CAD. Those students who placed 1st or 2nd will have the opportunity to compete at the state competition on April 14th at Illinois State University. Congratulations and good luck at state!!!

IVVC's Drafting & Design class shows some of their favorite Mythbuster Monday projects.

IVVC's Drafting & Design class shows some of their favorite Mythbuster Monday projects.

Cardboard Frisbee Challenge

by Nathan D. (Plano)

The cardboard Frisbee was of my favorite projects so far this year in Drafting. The challenge was to make a Frisbee out of a 12” x12” piece of cardboard. The outside had to remain in the original shape and size of the square, while cutting out the inside to make it more aerodynamic.

The purpose was to throw the Frisbee accurately straight and as far as possible. My design was simply a cut out circle - and it worked just as well as I thought it would. Most of the class had a variety of designs and it was interesting to see how each of them fared. I threw mine the second farthest while it was the most accurate. This was one of my favorite projects to do on our Mythbuster Mondays, which is a day where our class takes a hands-on challenge that relates to a similar project as the TV show Mythbusters.

IVVC Drafting & Design Mythbuster Monday - Watercraft

IVVC's 201-2012 Drafting & Design class attempted the second Mythbuster Monday challenge of the year by designing, building, and testing a boat made from paper cups, duct tape, straws, and plastic wrap. After completing the design and build, students tested the boat by adding pennies until the boat failed by sinking.

Congratulations to Joey K. (Sandwich) which held 89 pennies.

Law Enforcement, Drafting Students Collaborate to Design Police Station

For the last three weeks, the Law Enforcement and Drafting & Design classes have been working jointly to create and design a law enforcement community. The project was to build a police station on 60 acres of land behind IVVC. The surrounding land should also be designed to appeal to the public. The students not only had to design the building using the latest CAD software, but also create a PowerPoint that would be presented to both the Law Enforcement and Drafting classes.



In addition, they had to build a model to illustrate the building. Before taking on this project, both classes were able to tour several police stations in the area. The Law Enforcement student was the liaison to the architects. Their job was to assist the placement of certain areas. In one design, the Law Enforcement student informed the Drafting students that juvenile and adult offenders cannot be in the same areas. This is an important piece of knowledge when constructing room placements.



The presentations were to be a minimum of 10 minutes; however, they averaged about 20, with one presentation going over 34 minutes. That particular presentation also had a tri-fold brochure which was an awesome handout.



The models were very interesting and the ideas of how a community could come together were very enlightening for most of the students.

The students had a great time presenting and learning why a police station is designed a certain way. Having the chief’s office right next to the firing range doesn’t seem to be such a good idea now.

Catapult Project - A Day In The Life - IVVC Article

Shayne C., from Plano, took time out today to tell about his “catapult project” that was going to be tested later in the period. All of the students were given a list of materials and expected to come up with a catapult that would toss a ball for a measured distance competition. Shayne was sure his would go past the 20 foot mark and his would be one of the best. He really enjoys all the project work that combines creativity and applied knowledge in this class and plans on continuing his engineering education at the Institute of Technology in Morrison, Illinois this fall. Shayne enjoys this class because it enables him to turn his creative thoughts in to a real project. You will find Shayne hard at work this spring break at his job in the Outlet Mall where he “catapults” the money into the cash register.

IVVC Drafting & Design Mythbuster Monday- Helping Hand

by Allison K. - Somonauk

Most people would say you can’t make a hand out of cardboard, but the students in IVVC’s Drafting and Design class like to disagree. Each Monday, students participate in a new and different Mythbuster Monday Challenge.

Our challenge this week: Create a helping hand that can transport 3 tennis balls, the container - and the lid for extra credit - across a distance of approximately 7 feet. Students were given cereal box cardboard, tape, and brass fasteners to create their own version of a helping hand. For each challenge the only restriction is the student’s imagination. Just like with every challenge, each student’s design was unique and had its own advantages and downfalls. Some had pivot points, others chose to make a version of a clamp and use friction, and then there are those few that you don’t know what to call their design other than different. Each student tests their prototype and then makes changes based on the results of their experiments.

The places were as follows: 1st Jake J. – Sandwich, 2nd - Ross C. – Sandwich, and in 3rd place was Shayne C. - Plano.

Mythbuster Monday Individual Challenge Winner Is ...

Shayne C. from Plano. Great job Shayne. This concludes our Mythbuster Monday Individual Challenge which took place every Monday in the 1st semester. 13 challenging projects, ranging from bridge building to paper towers, made students think of the most efficient way of solving a problem with a limited amount of materials to beat their classmates.

It was close race for 1st place which was decided in our last task. Great job by the whole class. I hope you enjoyed the projects.

1st Place - Shayne C.(Plano) 159.5

2nd Place - Steff T.(Sandwich) 155.5

3rd Place - Robert M.(Sandwich) 148.5

IVVC Drafting & Design Mythbuster Monday - High Rise

IVVC's 2010-2011 Drafting & Design class attempted another Mythbuster Monday challenge by designing, building, and testing a structure that supports a tennis ball while a fan is blowing at it. Materials given were 16 sheets of newspaper, a 12" square cardboard base, 4' of tape and fishing line. The goal was to make the tallest structure to hold the tennis ball while withstanding the wind.

IVVC Drafting & Design Mythbuster Monday - On Target

IVVC's 2010-2011 Drafting & Design class attempted another Mythbuster Monday challenge by designing, building, and testing a carrier that will go down a zipline and drop a marble on a target. The goal was to drop the marble as close to the bullseye as possible. The carriers were made from a paper cup, tape, a paper clip, and index cards.

IVVC Drafting & Design Mythbuster Monday - Touchdown

IVVC's 2010-2011 Drafting & Design class attempted another Mythbuster Monday challenge by designing, building, and testing a carrier that will be dropped from 16' above the ground. The goal was to keep cotton balls and ping pong balls from falling out upon impacting the ground. The carriers were made from paper bowls, tape, straws, and index cards.

IVVC Drafting & Design Mythbuster Monday - Zipline

IVVC's 2010-2011 Drafting & Design class attempted the third Mythbuster Monday challenge of the year by designing, building, and testing a zip line carrier made from paper cups, masking tape, straws, and cardboard. After completing the design and build, students tested the carrier by sliding it down a 6 foot zip line. The goal was to have the carrier go as slow as possible while still moving at all times.

IVVC Drafting & Design Mythbuster Monday - Watercraft

IVVC's 2010-2011 Drafting & Design class attempted the second Mythbuster Monday challenge of the year by designing, building, and testing a boat made from paper cups, duct tape, straws, and plastic wrap. After completing the design and build, students tested the boat by adding pennies until the boat failed by sinking.

IVVC Drafting & Design Mythbuster Monday - Paper Table

IVVC's 2010-2011 Drafting & Design class started its first Mythbuster Monday challenge of the year by designing, building, and testing paper tables. Students were given 6 sheets of newspaper, 1 foot of masking tape, and a cardboard table top. The supports for the table were made out of newspaper only. Winners were determined by the number of textbooks the table held.

INTERIOR DESIGN PROJECT

by Steff T. (Sandwich)

This semester in Drafting, one of the main projects was to design a room in a house. For First year students, this meant picking a room out of the house that they are currently designing. For second year students, they picked a room out of a house that they designed last year.
The requirements of this task are to draw up four detailed elevations of the walls and one floor plan. Each of them also needed to include some paint samples, maybe some floor samples, and decorations. For the presentation, which was five Wednesdays after the assignment was given, students needed to explain why they chose the colors for the room, what their theme was, how and why the furniture is laid out, and their budgets.
I thought this project was fun. I really got to be creative in my choices of colors and designs.

MONDAY CHALLENGES

by: Collin G.

Each Monday the Drafting & Design class gets together and has a challenge set up for all of us. These little brain twisters often tease us by how easy it can be to do something. We have to find a way to make our project work better than all the others. Week one we received one piece of cardboard about 8 1/2 x 11 inches, a heavy book (textbook), masking tape, and eight sheets of newspaper. The object is to get as many books as you could hold on top of the cardboard. It had to be at least eight inches off the table.
In week two we were assigned to do a watercraft project. We each received duct tape, paper cups, 10-inch strip of plastic wrap, ten straws, and twenty five pennies. Also, there was a container full of water. We had to build a boat out of these materials and see who’s boat could hold the most pennies before the boat started taking on water.
In week three we had to make a zip-line, we got a piece of chipboard, 2 small paper cups, a ping pong ball, four plastic straws, scissors, a single-hole punch, four feet of tape. The first heat we had to make our zip-line carrier go down the string within four seconds, in the next heat we had to try to get the closest to four seconds, and in the last heat we had to try and make our carries last ten seconds before it hit the bottom.
Build, test, evaluate, & redesign are four things to consider while trying to design. You will mostly never be right the first time, you should always see what you did wrong the first time and try to make it better. Drafting & Design is a great hands-on class that prepares you for the future of drafting. In order to design something everyone needs to have ideas that are different and unique, that’s what makes the design better than all the others. I have learned a lot about designing from this class and it has helped me in a lot of different ways over the past year with other projects.

2009-2010 BRIDGE BUILDING CHALLENGE

by Corey C. - Plano
April 09, 2010

My favorite project for this year was our bridge building project. We got 60 Popsicle sticks and all the Elmer’s glue we could use and we had to build a bridge.

This bridge had to span 14 inches and had to hold over 50 pounds in order for us to get an A. Most of our Drafting class did well holding 20 or 30 pounds. Mine held just over 51 when it ended up breaking. No one thought mine would hold so much because of the upside-down design but it did fairly well. Collin and Tim built one that ended up holding over 132 pounds.

It has to be my all time favorite project so far, because it was so hands-on and we actually got to build the bridges and watch them slowly progress and be made complete. Also it was great to watch them splinter when the weight tore them apart while testing them. It could not have been better to watch each person have to purposely break their bridge to beat the previous records. It was a great time building and breaking bridges along with all the talk in between about whos would be better and that is why it is my favorite and most enjoyable project.

2010 IDEA STATE COMPETITION

Congratulations to Steff T. (Sandwich)and Jake J. (Sandwich) for their efforts at the 2010 IDEA State Competition. Steff took 2nd place in the Architectural - Board divsion while Jake took 1st place in the Machine - Board division. To qualify for the state competition each participant must place 1st or 2nd at a regional competition which was held at the beginning of March.

THE BOTTLE ROCKET COMPETITION

By Austin S. (Sandwich)

My favorite project this year was launching 2-liter bottle rockets. We were challenged to build and design a rocket out of a 2-liter bottle. We were tested on three different categories: how high the rocket goes, how close it landed to the launch pad, and how much time it took the rocket to hit its peak until it lands on the ground. The rocket was also being graded on craftsmanship and the decorative theme. The class got one week in class time to build the rocket. We could use whatever material we could think of to build/design the rocket. The rockets were launched using water and air compression. Most of the students used a garbage bag to act as a parachute so the rocket would go down slower and increase their time.
In the AM classes the top scorers were;
Altitude: Steff with 134’6”
Distance from launch pad: Zach with 16’ 6”
Time of decent: Austin with 8.16 seconds
The PM classes top scorers were;
Altitude: Corey with 78’
Distance from launch pad: Tim with 21’ 10”
Time of decent: Levi with 4.07s
This was one of my favorite projects this year because we got to use anything we wanted to use to compete with our fellow classmates and had fun with it.