This year, for a new annual festival here in the north east, we (Orbital FX) were tasked to design & fabricate a 6 meter high Yule Goat....thats right ... a Goat ... and for the metrically challenged among you that's around 20ft, after meeting with the Client and discussing the parameters we began our first drafts in .. of course solidworks, because of the geometric nature of the things we were looking to evoke hand carved anglo saxon era sculpture wood with appropriote coverings fit for a timeless festival we began.

Our first mockup was basic, just giving the client a view of what it could look like, with simple shapes rendered with a live-cloth simulation in Keyshot to provide the straw coat a bit of life! 

We experimented with various poses before settling on a standard standing pose, since they planned to make miniature replicas hand-woven from hay. 

We built a core structure in collaboration with our wood fabricator to match his fabrication intent and simulate a weight close to reality for designing the trailer and performing appropriate weight-loading calculations (ask me about the varying weight of straw under various weather conditions, haha...).

Communicating such a complex piece to a carpenter who barely touches a computer was a challenge.................. I'll admit with all the coaxing in the world he slowly began to see the benefit of being able to look at the 3d drawing and take his own dimensions instead of calling me for the 15th time in an hour haha (and i was glad for it too!) as you can see there are one or two cuts invovled!!

Something I must say I'm deeply sad about not having access to is a SOLIDWORKS Hay Sewing Simulator ... it's something you can't simulate or prepare for but requires grit around 300 meters of Jute Twain and around 450 hours of labour ... thankfully we had an outstanding volunteer team dedicated to bringing this bonkers vision to life!

Our structure was made of Bent lamination plywood & 2x4 Construction timber with a Wiremesh skin covered in hand-stitched hay/hessian panels secured with jute netting, every day is a school day and i can confidently say with our team, we are in a small pool of global experts on sewing hay to fabric with jute, staples and good,it's a competitive skills scene with literally ... tens of people globally haha!!

During the design and calculations, I did indeed lean on our AI overlords to double-check my assumptions about the regulations and weight-loading calculations I performed, so we could ensure we had an appropriate & safe trailer for our goat with saftey margins & appropriote braking, more and more i find myself using AI to support things i know but might be a bit rusty on and certainly helps me fly through those problems even just as a searching tool to find those calculations i may not have used in a few years!

This was a truly remarkable project, and it seems it will become an annual event, with the goat being skinned early in January, put into storage, and re-skinned for next season. This may not have been our most technical project, but it highlights the hand-in-hand nature of creative projects and technical tools like SolidWorks to bring your vision to life!