Parametric Design for the Perfect Ski

You get a ski! You get a Ski! Everybody gets a ski!

Our making assignment this week was to venture into the world of parametric design. This practice allows you to create distance expressions within your model that can be later changed. By implementing this practice designers can quickly change the dimensions of something to fit the needs of a new user. Think a chair made for adults and children. Instead of recreating the entire model, one can simply change the values associated with certain objects and customize accordingly. I need only look in my basement to find items I use that frequently change size; skis.

Depending on snow conditions a rider may use wildly different skis. If the snow is deep a rider can opt for a wider ski to help them float on top. No snow recently? Grab a pair of thin skis and rocket yourself down the slopes. With this simple concept in mind I headed back into Fusion 360 and began mapping out the basic ski. Seen below are the two planes utilized to layout half of a ski. e

top down view (left) and from the side (right)

The next step in this process was to draw the actual outline of the ski. With the skeleton already established this process consisted of simply connecting the dots. Some custom curves were added to create the tip, underfoot camber, and tail of the ski. The draw out shapes can be seen below.

With the simple sketch plane shapes drawn I now began to actually form the skis. This process started by extruding the side profile sketch plane until it overlapped the top down plane. I think extruded the top down plane and operated an intersect command. This process creates a new shape where the two sketches intersect. Now possessing half a ski, I mirrored the object and joined them together. Some minor tweaking was needed to the original sketch as the tip did not join as intended.

With a finished ski in hand it was time to start customizing. Below you can see three skis: a powder ski, a park ski, and a cross country ski. Each ski contains the same relative geometry with drastically different underfoot and tip widths.