Process/Reflection: For my Omni "Animal" project, I based my design off of a generic Japanese temple and then added my own twist to the decorative portion of it. Originally, I wanted to do a multitiered temple, but ultimately I couldn't think of how to make it all come together while still maintaining relatively small x,y,z values. In my preliminary design, my temple had an x-axis of 17in and a z of ~12in. Realizing that this was way too big, I had to scale it down while keeping the same .21in tolerance for slotting each piece of wood.
One major challenge I overcame during this project was figuring out how to join my cross sections and panels together. I researched how the ancient Japanese temples were kept together, and found that all the pieces were slotted together like a jigsaw puzzle. Much like the ancient temples in Japan, the only "adhesive" I used was gravity. I tried to mimic similar slotting techniques used in the making of real temples which took a substantial amount of time to replicate, but in return I didn't have to use any glue.
Looking back at this project, I'm immensely satisfied with the result. Not only did I achieve to make an awesome temple, but I further opened myself up to other fields of engineering which I plan to pursue in college.