Box Bridge Design for Fish Ladder

Hi my name is Cody and I am a junior at MAP Academy Charter School.

One of of the activities I enjoy in in my spare time is walking on a variety of nature trails and paths. On a field trip we went to look at spots for a possible bridge. We came across a spot that was treacherous to go over.

The spot is on a main walking path at Stewart/Person preserve in Kingston, Ma. It is a fish ladder that requires a lot of balance and being able to walk in a long stride to make it over. This can be harder for older people who are physically unable to cross and for young children 5 to 6 years old who could fall in and get injured.

• School issued Chromebook
• Tinkercad
• Measuring tools

This is on a main path at the Stewart/Person Preserve. It's a spillway/fish ladder that allows fish to go to and from a distant pond for breeding. This structure can cause trouble for people walking on this trail.

One time an old man was walking down the trail and had a hard time crossing.

Now, imagine walking with your parents or you are the parent walking with your young kid and you have to walk across this spill way. Also if you are a young and reckless kid, you could get yourself hurt. If you are an older individual you could find it hard to keep balance or walk over the gap.

This is why I chose this spot.

The goal for my bridge is to make it easy to build, cheap, and provide a safe passage.

There is an existing structure at this site. I spent time measuring and observing people cross in the area. My friends and I loved it but it would be hard to cross if you were older. I wanted to make a bridge that could fit over the current fish ladder. It should fit in with the design of the fish ladder.

1. I started off by laying down the foundation of the fish ladder in Tinkercad. In order to build a bridge I wanted to spend a lot of time having a detailed digital model of the existing conditions. I spent a lot of time getting the existing spill way and fish ladder structure correct in Tinkercad.
2. I made three long rectangles for the base of the fish ladder.
3. I measured the distance of the real fish ladder to make sure my model was accurate.
4. I used the group function in Tinkercad to group the fish ladder structure and separate them from everything else. Then I locked it into place.
5. Then I started making the rough foundations of my bridge. Using mostly rectangles and copying and pasting to make my structure as symmetrical as possible.
6. I used the Hole feature to cut out designs in the bridge.
7. After cutting out railings and planks I used the group tool to group everything together.
8. I did more finer details on the railings to make it look smooth with the Hole tool.

Throughout my experience on this project I had a lot of fun. It can be frustrating at first to use the software. The more I stuck with it the more comfortable I got. It gets easier the more you use it. At the start I had no clue what to use and I didn't understand all the tools! l I taught myself to use the software and learned all of these cool features. The locking and grouping tools were very helpful. It was helpful to go to the locations and survey possible sites in the real world. I enjoyed this project because I had fun learning Tinkercad and what it has to offer. In the future I would like to become a software engineer and use tools like this. I am interested in character design and other areas of software design.