The great thing about CAD is that you can see what your end product will look like before you even build it.
For my last intern project at Autodesk, I worked with my mentor Sachlene to create an Arduino powered word clock. I was first inspired by these three tutorials: one, two, three, and decided to create my own version of the word clock. I was also fortunate enough to have access to Autodesk's Pier 9 facility to laser cut wood and solder the electronics together. I've got a few photos of my process below!
I found a simple font online and then took my lettering layout into Adobe Illustrator. Turning each letter into a stencil was tricky, and though I got the O, R, A, and Q, I forgot the P and had to glue the middle area back to the board with a tiny piece of wood in between. Also, since the 2'x3' sheet was a little warped, I ended up running 3 total passes to get 95% of the lines fully cut through. However, this made the edges of my wooden baffles charred and sticky. I ended up having to re-cut all of the baffles, but each pass took 20-30 minutes to do, so I lost a lot of time on this project just dealing with laser cutting.
Since I soldered a little for a class at Illinois, I was comfortable with soldering the resistors and LEDs together (which, by the way, I had to do 98 times). When I was testing my LEDs, I was ecstatic that they even turned on and fit in the back board and baffles! I had a lot of fun staying late into the evening at Pier 9 removing the copper off the back of a stripboard using a screwdriver and drill bit at Pier 9. Finally, I worked with my electrical/computer engineer brother to finalize the wiring. How lucky!
I was also lucky to have duct tape, since it held up/together the interior of the clock.
The best part about this clock (aside from all the knowledge and experience I gained) is that it actually keeps time.
