Claire Puginier: Week 6: Live Dim Sunglasses

 For this project I wanted to create a pair of sunglasses that mimicked the retro/surf style of many of the current Ray Ban and Tom Ford glasses. However, as these glasses are very expensive, I wanted to simplify these designs down to a more basic form with less cost-intensive materials so they may be more accessible. I can imagine this kind of a product having success in stores like H&M, where brand styles are used to inspire an entire line of low-grade accessories. By maintaining what I essentially think gives the glasses their nonchalant glamour, it is possible to make something cheap pass with sophistication. Additionally, I started to think it may be possible to create a more economical design by removing certain mechanical functions inherent to most glasses. By removing from the production processes, a company producing these would spend less on capitol equipment, thereby further reducing production and sales cost. The lenses here are extruded directly from the inner rim of the frames rather than being an autonomous module. 

The frames are made with a very minimal amount of wood. The wires, nose bridge and skrews are made of aluminium. As to the process, I made the frames by drawing the curve of one frame and then extruding the surface. I used crv2view to shape the arc of the lense and frame. The nose bridge as well as the wires are made from a series of pipes and lofts. The frame edges are filleted at 0.1. Other than that I also used the commands split, blend, booleandifference and sweep2.