As a engineering project for the CSU Sophomore Design Class(ME202) students were allowed to select a group of 3-5 people, choose a small mechanically movable toy, disassemble, analyze, and then reverse engineer it. The toy was then to be reassembled, put into original packaging, and then donated to a local charity.

Aside from honing basic CAD modeling and assembly skills the toys selected had to meet several criteria to ensure that the project was of sufficient complexity that the work could not be done by a single person. Students were required to work collectively to model, analyze, and then assemble separately modeled parts. This project developed helped develop basic team working skills, such as communication and collaboration to develop parts that while modeled separately, would assemble together correctly. Because of the group nature of the work students learned to budget time, and maintain a project plan to ensure that not only their individual work was completed on time, but that collectively work was completely on time so that final assembly and revision could occur in group meetings. Overall this fairly simple modeling project introduces and develops the basic fundamentals of working cohesively in a team environment.

This is the actual toy selected, it was a small toy boat about 8 inches long, powered by two AA batteries:

This is the final assembled model:

This is an exploded view of the completely assembled model:

While every part was modeled in detail, these are some of the major components of the assembly.