During my first quarter at UCLA, I joined the Fabrication and Design Essentials (FADE) training program - a yearlong skill building course run by ASME at UCLA. It was an opportunity for me to learn the basics of CAD and additive machining. As a first-year with hardly any technical knowledge, I quickly realized that FADE would be a wonderful opportunity for me to establish the foundations needed to be a successful engineer.

Phase One of FADE focused on Computer Aided Design (CAD) fundamentals using Solidworks; below is the wooden desk that I modeled for the final project. 

The wooden desk was a great introduction to SOLIDWORKS, but later I decided to take it up a notch...

The COVID-19 pandemic hit in the middle of my first year at UCLA; while at home, I decided to further strengthen my CAD skills, since I had no access to campus machine shops and labs. 

Taipei 101 is one of my favorite places to visit in Taiwan; the 508-meter tall tower houses a 660-ton tuned mass damper- one of the only tuned mass dampers that is open to the public eye. 

The images below show different subsections of my CAD assembly. I started building from the ground up, starting with the base, then adding the eight tiered stacks. I finished the main body by adding the observation deck, on the 89th floor, and then topping it all off with the spire. 

The final model is about 36 centimeters tall (~1:1400 ratio). Not only did I learn to use many of the more advanced features in SOLIDWORKS, but I also learned a lot about the mechanics behind how the tuned mass damper, as well as the external structural features on the skyscraper, work together to minimize oscillation amplitudes during heavy typhoons (vortex shedding, damped oscillations, etc.).