Puzzle Design Process: Midterm Portfolio Review

Problem Statement

A local office furniture manufacturing company throws away tens of thousands of scrap 3⁄4” hardwood cubes that result from its furniture construction processes. The material is expensive, and the scrap represents a sizeable loss of profit.

Design Statement
Fine Office Furniture, Inc. would like to return value to its waste product by using it as the raw material for desktop novelty items that will be sold on the showroom floor. Design, build, test, document, and present a three-dimensional puzzle system that is made from the scrap hardwood cubes. The puzzle system must provide an appropriate degree of challenge to high school students.

Criteria

1. The puzzle must be fabricated from 27 – 3⁄4′′ hardwood cubes.
   
2. Thepuzzlesystemmustcontainexactlyfivepuzzleparts.
   
3. Eachindividualpuzzlepartmustconsistofatleastfour,butnomorethansix hardwood cubes that are permanently attached to each other.
   
4. Notwopuzzlepartscanbethesame.
   
5. Thefivepuzzlepartsmustassembletoforma21⁄4′′cube.
   
6. Somepuzzlepartsshouldinterlock.
   
7. Thepuzzleshouldrequirehighschoolstudentsanaverageof______minutes/ seconds to solve. (Fill in your target solution time.)
   

SubmittalCreate a project portfolio to include the following:

• Design Process Description, summarizing your work during each step of the design process
• Documentation, include written work, sketches, CAD parts, images, etc. to support your discussion. Specifically, documentation of:
• Brainstorm sketches of all possible part combos
• Cake layers for both designs
• Choice design, with explanation of why this is the best choice
• Multi-view for each part of final design
• Assemblage of one part from your partner's multi-view sketch
• CAD parts of final design

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