How MATLAB Helped Me Regain My Confidence

The winter in Germany is particularly hard to endure.

Unlike in my home country, where nights and days are similar, in Germany, winter days and nights feel the same—cold, dark, and windy. It’s impossible to take the little one out to play.

How MATLAB Helped Me Regain My Confidence

Being stuck at home with a child is incredibly frustrating; friends without kids might not understand this feeling. It’s like being in isolation for months, and the whole family feels emo.

To make winter more bearable, we bought an indoor climbing frame for the little one.

This climbing frame is simply amazing! It can be assembled into different shapes and difficulties according to the instructions. The little one can play on it for a long time, although it takes a toll on the parents, as disassembling and assembling it takes four hours.

Finally, I could get back to tinkering with my MATLAB!

However, just a few weeks later, the little one got bored with it because the designs in the manual were limited, and the whole family was back to feeling emo.

Then my wife said, “Aren’t you studying mechanical engineering? Isn’t designing a climbing frame your specialty?”

For a moment, I almost believed it.I studied climbing frame design and manufacturing. How MATLAB Helped Me Regain My Confidence

So I started to freely DIY the climbing frame, and it got pretty chaotic. Either I was missing a rod on one side or there weren’t enough connectors on the other. After two days of struggling, I couldn’t put together a safe climbing frame, and in the end, the little one could even screw the bolts by himself.

Then my wife said, “With your mechanical engineering background, this isn’t impressive.” How MATLAB Helped Me Regain My Confidence

I’m not sure if I learned mechanical engineering, but I am a MATLAB enthusiast. So, I spent an entire night writing a GUI tool to design climbing frames.

This tool has some really interesting features; by clicking anywhere, you can create a line, which represents a rod for the climbing frame. You can also choose to add a panel within any boundary.

The most important feature is that it calculates how many different types of connectors and rods are left, preventing me from designing an overly ambitious climbing frame that I can’t assemble.

Additionally, by clicking the build button, it automatically splits the structure into different layers, so I can construct it based on the displayed hierarchical structure.

After a whole day of hard work, I finally built a climbing frame for the little one and the monkey.

This is my recent sharing about what I’ve been doing with MATLAB.

If anyone is interested in this tool or wants to know how to create lines by clicking in the figure window, reply “climbing frame” on my public account to automatically get the source code of the tool.

Finally, as the year is ending, I’d like to make a little advertisement for my knowledge circle.

If you’re looking to learn MATLAB with a group, consider joining my knowledge circle. In addition to the MATLAB/Simulink materials I’ve organized, there are also:

Industry materials and experiences shared by peers in the automotive industry.
Three permanent activation codes for the Hao series tools (including HaoTemplate, HaoCurve, HaoModel, HaoShit).
Unlimited questions about MATLAB for a year (if I know the answer).
Monthly meetings organized through Tencent for exchanges and Q&A.

Lastly, I wish everyone success in their work and studies!

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