Final Design

I started doing the 3Ds Max for our final design. I started by importing the autoCAD plan that I did so I can follow the dimensions. I actually had a hard time getting the pattern of the roof as it is quite hard to get the curves. This was my first time doing a vehicle using 3Ds Max and I was really afraid that it might not turn out to be as realistic. Another hard part was making the vehicle look streamline. The curves have to be obvious to show the streamline body. I had a hard time making choice for whether the material should be matte, pearl or glossy. You really have to imagine how each part will affect the design, be it good or bad.

Process of rendering

The fun thing of doing 3Ds Max is that you can play around with different kind of materials. You will also feel a great relieve after it turns out to be what you expect.

This is my final outcome of my final design. I make the backgrounds look like a sky to make it look like it is flying in the sky. I went to show the interior as it really gives people a feeling how seating in it feels like.

Choices of material for the final design

I wanted the vehicle to be built out of aluminium, copper, magnesium and chromium because those are a common type of metals use to made aeroplane as according to my source <http://www.ask.com/question/what-metals-are-aeroplanes-made-from>. 

For the seats, I imagine that the passengers have to take a very long flight as landing and taking off will take a longer time for a vehicle this size. So i picked leather to be the material for their seats so they will have a much comfortable ride. 

The entrance and exit for the plane, I intended to use sliding door as it will not take too much room. Unlike the pivot door.

Color

Before doing the 3Ds Max. We had a group discussion on what color to use. We listed out some color like light blue, blue, grey, black, white, beige, yellow, orange, red and purple. We then imagine the vehicle out using this color to see which color will suit the vehicle more. We wanted to use as little color as possible so the vehicle will not be a moving rainbow in the sky. One of my group mate suggest that we take out any color that is related to sky. So we took out the color, light blue, blue, purple and grey as she thinks that if the vehicle is to blend in with the sky, other airplanes in the sky will not be able to see it very clearly and chances of those two crushing into each other is very high. We are then left with white, beige, yellow, orange, red and black. We wanted something with light color so our design will not look too 'scary' to the passenger. We wanted them to know that they will have a safe trip to their destination. We took out red, yellow and orange as they resemble flame. We also took out black as that color means the evil to most people. We decided to use beige and white as our airplane color.

AutoCAD drawing

With all the dimensions decided, a visual imagination of how our vehicle should look like. We then decided to use AutoCAD and Autodesk 3Ds Max to make our final design.

me doing the AutoCAD

The hard part of doing AutoCAD is turning our perspective imagination into the top plan, front plan and side plan. 

The AutoCAD drawing

The finalise AutoCAD drawing of our final design

Reason for the streamline body

We wanted our vehicle to be streamline body as we believe streamline body will make the vehicle go faster.

According to our research, <http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_can_making_things_streamlined_make_them_go_faster?#slide=2>, making a vehicle streamline reduces the ar resistance on the object. So it will not have to work as hard at high speeds and can therefore go faster.

According to another source, <http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_streamlining_affects_forces_and_speed_on_cars?#slide=2>, Streamlining is an application of fluid dynamics to an object in order to reduce its drag coefficient. The drag force on an object is determined by three things, the shape of the object, the fluid it's moving through, and how fast it is moving through that fluid. The idea of streamlining is to reduce the drag coefficient of a car by changing it's shape, thus reduces the amount of force the car has to fight against at a given speed or alternatively given the car's power allow it to go faster. It makes the car move easily through the air, which cuts down fuel consumtion. For race cars it gives more speed.

Streamlined car <http://www.luxuriousmagazine.com/2011/11/infiniti-reveals-the-shape-of-their-new-electric-sports-car-concept-for-launch-in-2013/>

Added lightning proof feature

We added a new feature to our vehicle which is to make it lightning proof. We thought to ourselves that if our vehicle is to be in the sky most of the time, there would be chances that the vehicle will have to fly into thunder clouds.

According to our source <http://edition.cnn.com/2010/TRAVEL/08/17/planes.lightning.strikes/>, It's estimated that lightning strikes each plane in the U.S. commercial fleet about once a year without any serious consequences, according to Lightning Technologies Inc., a Massachusetts company that designs lightning protection for civilian and military aircraft. If a plane is struck by lightning, it will be require to land to avoid more damage. But there are report that one passenger was killed after the plane broke apart while trying to land in bad weather. 

This is the reason why we wanted to add lightning proof feature to our vehicle so it will not be required to land even if lightning struck it. 

Research on how the vehicle will look like

I drew sketches of aeroplane to get a rough idea of how the jet engine should look like and how long the wingspan should be.

I drew car to know how is a vehicle state to have streamline body.

I drew double decker bus to see how high one deck should be.

I also research on double decker car to get an idea for our design.

I went and discuss with my group mates about the dimensions of our vehicle. We concluded that it have a length of 20,000 millimetre, a height of 6000 millimetre and a width of 5180 millimetre. We also concluded that the wingspan have to be about 21,000 millimetre in order for the vehicle to be able to take flight.

Why the Sky?

Why did we wanted to bring our design up into the sky? People manage to measure the depth of the deepest ocean but no one have yet to measure the height of the sky. No one have an exact answer to where the sky stops. All we know for now is that 300kilometer above ground level is the outer space. But no one actually state how high anyone could get to the top of the sky. Our planet is orbiting around around our sun alongside other planets and this made us one galaxy. Beyond our galaxy, we also discover another galaxy which is the Andromeda Galaxy.

This is a picture of Andromeda <http://www.solstation.com/x-objects/andromeda.htm>

We can also conclude that we are not the only galaxy out there. With this we can concluded the sky has no limit. We can make vehicles that are so large as big as our planet, it will still fit into the space. This is why we wanted to make the vehicle able to fly. 

Combined ideas.

We discuss among ourselves and we thought of creating a kind of public transport that is at least two storeys and we are hoping the design can carry at least 200 passengers. We also wanted our design to be able to fly. We also wanted our design to be able to move on the ground so if the vehicle breaks down, it can still transport passenger to their destination. We then started deciding how the plane should fly. We came out with ideas like, propeller, jet engines and hover.

We rejected the idea of using propeller as that design could only move forward by tilting forward. Which also means the people on the top level will feel more gravitational pull as they will feel the tilt even more.

Helicopter <http://www.zastavki.com/eng/Aviation/wallpaper-39956.htm>

We also rejected the idea of hover car as the design will be very big in order to carry 200 passengers. Which also means that the design will need lots of hovers in order to lift it up into the sky.

Hover car<http://www.creativecrash.com/3d-model/aston-martin-db9-hover-car>

In the end, we go for the idea of using jet engines as it is more stable as compared to the other two ideas. And people now a days recognise jet engines just by looking at it so it will not make our design too hard to understand.

Aeroplane<http://www.afranko.com/2013/11/aeroplane/>

Top 5 Ideas

We studied the survey and our 101 ideas and we picked out the top 5 ideas that could solve our problem.

Top 5 ideas 1

Top 5 ideas 2

We then discuss on which 3 designs should we pick to combine our ideas and we picked the Double decker train, Bigger/Wider bus and flying car.

We already made a survey to ask people what they feel about traffic jam all that so we know how the public feel about our problem. With this informations, we can go in depth to see how we could think of a solid solutions for our problem. Here's the questions we ask.

Survey question 1 

Survey question 2

Survey question 3

Survey question 4

Survey question 5

Survey question 6

Survey question 7

Survey question 8

Survey question 9

Survey question 10

Going into Research

In many urban countries, transportation issues are a concern to everyone alike. One of this concern is traffic jams, in which we will look into Singapore. Singapore has is one of the four newly industrialised economies of the world today .With such a good economy , it will increase foreigners to stay in Singapore bringing a raise in population therefore causing traffic jams . This will happen as many of the roads are built to narrow especially in the city centre during peak hours. Therefore the various solution is that people should make use of the public transport in Singapore to reduce the number of cars and pollution in the environment. Government has also increased the price of the certificate of entitlement (COE) in Singapore to help decrease the demand for the number of cars .At the same time , roads should be built to a maximum so as to allow movement in times of peak hours . The result will allow Singapore to have a better efficient traffic flow according to our scoure. <http://therealsingapore.com/content/coe-prices-will-continue-increase-and-traffic-problem-will-only-get-worse>

Results of Traffic Jam

My group also discuss of what may the results of traffic jam. As a result of a traffic jam , people of various groups are affected both young and old alike.For example, pregnant women , infants or victim in an ambulance. If there is a traffic jam and a pregnant women is on her way to deliver her baby , it may cause further complications to her baby if it is not delivered properly due to the delays cause by a traffic jam. An injured victim may likely suffer as well especially if he is suffering from a severe wound and is bleeding profusely which may lead him into a coma as there is not enough blood to circulate.This may in turn even cause death because of the lack of provision during the given time especially during a delay where equipment is limited. Last but not least , babies are also likely to suffer from the constant braking and acceleration from the car during a traffic jam which may affect their learning in the future as babies are very fragile and tender.

Our 101 ideas

We are asked to think of 101 of ideas that we think could help solve our problem.

This is a picture of our 101 ideas. We mainly try to think of solution which can carry more passenger. Like, Bigger/Wider bus, double decker train, bigger cars. Before we did our 101 ideas, we thought to ourselves that faster travelling time equals to lesser chance of a traffic jam. If more people can get from point A to point B at the same time means people will not have to be scolded for being late for work or school.

Stepping into their shoe

I went to try and understand why drivers will cause a traffic jam. I tried putting myself in the drivers shoes to see how drivers cause traffic jam in different scenario. Scenario 1: I am a office guy working at city hall and I always drive to work. I have to work overtime almost everyday as the work load is way too much. Hence, I do not have enough time for sleep. I tend to drive very slow as I am afraid I would fall asleep while driving and causing an accident. Sometime, I am too tired to even realise that I am driving on two lanes. Scenario 2: I am a student that study in Nanyang Academey of Fine Arts. I always drive to school using my father's car. My school is located in the central area. In the morning, I would get stuck in a traffic jam as most people would be driving to work in the central area, hence the traffic jam. I did not dare to try and overtake the car infront of me as it is my father's car and I am afraid of damaging it as I just gotten my driver license not too long ago.

Finding who to focus our problem on

Our problem is cause by drivers, roadside worker and sometime even commuters. So we tried to find out who is the one that might have more chances to start a traffic jam. We did some discussion about what each of those could do to start a traffic jam. All we could think of the roadside worker is very straight forward. Road work. The commuters can either start a quarrel with drivers to make them go slower or maybe they might even get in an accident which might also start a traffic jam. But for drivers, accident can happen when drivers are reckless. Drink driving can also cause accident to happen. Weekend drivers tends to drive slow as they are not frequent driver which might be a reason to why they drive slow. Road hoggers can also start a traffic jam as they will slow down everyone behind them. So from our discussion, we concluded that the only people that could have more chances of starting a traffic is definitely the drivers. So we decided to do some extensive research into why drivers are the main causes of traffic jam.

Doing our mind map

On the first day of this new module, Design Process, we were spilt into our groups and my group members are Ranjeeta and Megan. We are then asked to give a name for our group and we went for the name , "#lifeofanartstudent". We are then given topic to choose from and my group chose traffic jam to work on. We started by drawing our mind map. Basic the 4Ws and 1H. Who? What? When? Where? How? This is a picture of our mind map.

From our mind map, we learn that there seems to be no solid solution for our topic. The causes of our problem is endless.