History loving student designed the winning image of a Panzer III Tank

Brady Richardson from University of Alabama in Huntsville loves history, especially the history of military vehicles and equipment. Check out from his own words how he design this winning image:

• My major is mechanical engineering with an interest in robotics. My focus is in robotics with military applications, mainly to remove soldiers from harm’s way.


• I chose to create a tank from the beginning because I love tanks. My mom is a huge history buff, especially the history of WWII, so I grew up liking historic tanks and other military vehicles.


• A challenge with the design of the tank was making sure every part had the proper dimensions. Far too often one part would be slightly larger and interfere with other parts. Sometimes this difference was as little as .01 mm. This was more of an annoyance though than a major problem, and was solved by altering the dimensions slightly until the interference was gone. The biggest challenge was accurately getting the treads to move without interfering with other parts. It took me a week to figure out how to accurately create paths for parts to move on in Solid edge. The main problem was that the treads needed to be fully connected to each other and move on the path. In order to do this, the path needed to be exactly the right length, but also be a realistic shape for the treads. Getting the treads to be connected to the path and to each other without breaking their relationships took a long time.


• I used Solid Edge to design the tank and Keyshot to render the final images.


• I would recommend Solid Edge and Keyshot to another student. Solid Edge was intuitive to use, and was easier to learn than other design programs I’ve used in the past. Keyshot worked well because it allowed for a wide variety of materials, as well as different lighting and bump maps.

Congratulations to Brady for his phenomenal work! Please check out the winning entry in our academic community.

To enter the design contest, submit a new entry with an image created using one of Siemens PLM Software products. If you are a student, you can download free our Solid Edge software from our website.