How to Make a Solidworks/Real Snowman Jack O' Lantern

When I was little I made the most awesome Jack O' Lantern ever which looked like a snowman! This instructable will teach you how to make that same snowman in Solidworks. As well these same instruction can be used to make a real one!

If you are making a real one you will have to find yourself some white pumpkins, or maybe you could paint some orange ones white. 

I'm hoping to get a chance to try printing this out in 3D sometime soon so I will post the results if I get it to work. Though there might need to be some modifications to make the pieces. I have added all the Solidworks files on here if anyone want to try it themselves by converting them to .stl files.

This step you will create the size of the pumpkin by creating the same sketch in the picture. Make sure to have it ofset from the origin as it will make things easier later on. After you do the sketch revolve it around the line that is on the left to create this thing that look like a cheese wheel!

Now  you will need to make a line that goes through the origin and you will make a circular pattern around this line. You can choose what you want the pumpkin to look like by how many instances of it you duplicate. Now you will have multiple cheese wheels all intersecting which equals a pumpkin! 

Now take out your digital spoon, or real spoon and take out the insides. Actually for doing it in Solidworks you will make a layer on the outside of your desired thickness, by simply just clicking the shell button. This will get rid of everything on the inside and just leave a shell of it. The best part is you don't even have to deal with the mess! If you are making a snowman then I suggest saving a copy of it here. Otherwise you can continue to just create a regular Jack O' Lantern.

Now you will need to find where the top part of the pumpkin intersects. Once you find this make a plane on it, and then draw the shape of your stem on it. After that change it to a side view and find this intersect part again and draw another curve of you choice coming out from it as seen in the second picture. Once you have these you can do a sweep along the line and you will have a stem!

Now go onto a side plane again and draw the face of your choice! I just did a simple one for a snowman but anything could be drawn. Once you are done drawing, extrude cut all the way through the surface. Now you have a regular looking Jack O' Lantern, you can stop here or continue on to make a snowman!

Now cut off the top so that the pieces can sit on top of each other. After this make a few button wholes as well as arm holes. I made the bottom piece have one button and the middle have 2 button holes and arm holes.

Hat: To make the hat draw the sketch in the first picture, and then do a revolved boss around the middle. Now you have a super classy top hat!

Carrot: Now do another sketch but make it look like half of a 2-D carrot, and again do a revolved boss around the middle. Now you have a tasty carrot!

Corn Cob Pipe: This time you will have to make 2 cylinders of different size that are attached. After that extrude out the middles to make something that looks like the picture. Now you have a fancy corn cob pipe!

To make the arms you will have to use the loft feature. To do this create a small circle on one plane, then go to the plane facing out from it and make a wavy line that attaches to the to of the circle that you made. After this you will need to create a plane that is at the very end of the line, now that you have a plane here make another really tiny circle that also has the top attached to the same line. Now that you have this you can simply use the loft feature to create the arm.

To make the finger sticking out from it I started from the same circle and did the same thing except for making the line curve up near the end so that it would poke out of the other loft.

Now that you have all your parts, or materials if you are making a real one, you can put it together. Start a new assembly and drag all you pieces in here. After you do that you can give all the pieces colour so you can make it look like a real snowman!

Now if you want to give a home to your snowman you can use apply scene to change the background. Solidworks has a few built in like this random factory. if you want to put in your own background go to option > colours, and then under change background appearance choose image file where you can use your own images. To get a snowy looking background either come up here to Canada, or climb a mountain like I did! I hope you all like your classy snowman Jack O' Lantern, whether it is digital or real!