Koch's Snowflake on Solidworks Report

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by Kathy Sun

Table of Contents

Abstract

For my project, I used Solidworks to design a 3-dimensional version of Koch's Snowflake.

Introduction

The goal of this project was to create Koch's Snowflake on Solidworks and to become more familiar with Solidworks. Because as a class, we did not spend very much time using Solidworks, I thought it would be useful to become more familiar with the program. Creating Koch's Snowflake on the program seemed like a good way to accomplish this goal, because Koch's Snowflake has interesting properties - it has a finite area but an infinite perimeter - and is aesthetically pleasing.

Background/Theory

There were several technical details involved in this project. In Koch's snowflake, the side length of each smaller triangle is one third the side length of the previous iteration. Because I was trying to create a 3-dimensional version of Koch's Snowflake, I needed to create tetrahedrons. To do this I needed to know that the height of a tetrahedron is the square root of 6 multiplied by the side length of the triangular base divided by 3. Also, Solidworks allows its user to loft together two parts. This function creates faces connecting the two parts together. For example, for a tetrahedron, lofting creates the faces of the tetrahedron.

Completed Project Design

Results

Discussion/Conclusion