Hi Everyone,

I made some progress on the mechanical design of the AluPi this weekend, and I thought I'd give an update.

I'm trying out OpenSCAD for the mechanical design and planning of the device. OpenSCAD allows you to define geometry programmatically. This makes it relatively easy to create parameterized geometry. The case design I'm working on (not shown), and the numpad shown in the image below use basically the same code. I have data to define the position and symbol on each button, general button properties (width, length, symbol padding etc.), and size of the case. Everything else is produced from that information. If you've done programming before you should definitely give it a try. I've mainly used SketchUp for mechanical designs and sketches (as you can see in a previous project log and the project thumbnail), but I wanted to make this project as open as possible. I've even been burned very recently from SketchUp because I migrated to a Windows Vista machine. Since SketchUp doesn't support anymore, I had to venture to the corners of the internet to find an old installer.

I wanted to get a rough idea of how the mechanical design would work in terms of the buttons, so I sent the model shown above to a person who lived near me through 3d Hubs. Sadly, the print order was declined. I haven't spent the time to look for another "hub" to print the design, but I'll need to try again at some point later on in the project. I don't really need to get anything printed at the moment, I was just hoping to get some early feedback on the mechanical design.

Thanks for reading!

-Stephen