In a recent effort to to find quick things to model that still pose challenges and force me to think of new ways to model, I recently designed a SW logo inspired mug with a coaster. As a SOLIDWORKS employee, I guess the brand has permeated into various parts of what I think about.  

After testing a few different handle designs, I decided to leverage xShape to quickly sculpt a handle shape much better than I had been able to achieve with sketches and other parametric features. 

I thought it would be fun to create a coaster to save myself some cleaning in the future. The coaster with the "SW" letters proved to be challenging because I had to think about how to ensure that it followed the curvature of the cup and had an appropriate offset from the mug. I also wanted to be able to 3D print the coaster so I had to connect the letters to the base of the coaster. 

After the design was all completed, I decided to insert one of the existing design Environments in xDesign to see my design in the wild. I tested the kitchen environment and the office environment.  From there I created a rendering project in xStudio to create some quick renderings of the design. 

Next step would be to 3D print both to see if putting the handle on the corner instead of the side would improve the usability of rectangular mugs and not spilling everywhere. I will update the post when I print everything.