Outcome

I have multiple USB drives holding large files that are laying on my desk. Since I also use my desk to do homework, I usually have papers, folders, and notebooks all over it. This sometimes makes it hard to find the USB drives when I need a file from them.

Research

Most other USB drive holders I see online lay flat on the table, and as a result it doesn't help too much with the problem of being covered up by papers and notebooks. They also have space for an unnecessarily large number of USB drives, which I think would look bad on my desk since the majority of the slots would be empty. I needed a USB drive holder that would be easy to find no matter how messy my desk is, while also providing an appropriate number of slots.

Aesthetics and Inspiration

I needed a USB holder that was easy to find on a cluttered desk, and so my main inspiration was tall, easily noticeable buildings. I first made a sketch of a tower-like structure that held the USB drives vertically to take up less horizontal space, and realized that the USB drives could "dock" to the tower like a blimp. This left open space underneath and I thought that it looked cooler.

First I made a circle in the bottom plane, then had to construct a new plane above the circle. In this plane, I could make the base of the square shape that the USB drives would actually dock to. Then I used the "loft" tool to generate a smooth shape joining these two parts, and thickened it to make it a solid body. I extruded the square on top and added ports for docking the USB drives.

Renderings

I think that this project could be improved with a hinged door to an internal compartment in the cylinder where I could store and better protect USB drives that I use less frequently. I learned a lot about how different shapes are made, and how in CAD, the different parts of an object are defined relative to each other. I also learned about how the parts of a model can be created somewhat separately and then be joined together later.

Another way of improving this project would be to use better measurements on my USB drives to ensure they fit better into the ports, which I oversized by about 1 mm in each dimension for safety. I did not realize that the official USB connector specification was not freely available online, so if given another chance i would measure my USB drives and make sure the holder could accommodate them while fitting tighter.