This article from Digital Engineering details a build project where SolidWorks engineers teamed with Magic Wheelchair to design and fabricate a castle-and-carriage themed costume for a child in a wheelchair. The initiative draws on volunteer design talent, i.e., mechanical engineers, CAD users, makers, and artists, to turn a creative idea into reality, at no cost to the family.
Key to the process was using SolidWorks CAD software to model the wheelchair interface and costume structure, ensuring fit-tolerance, safety, and aesthetics. With access to the wheelchair’s native CAD model, the team saved time in design, produced accurate mountings, and leveraged SolidWorks tools for collaboration across disciplines. Beyond CAD, the build team managed tasks such as CNC cutting, fabrication of sub-frames, LED lighting installation, and final aesthetics. They also considered practical constraints such as door-way clearance, weight distribution, and mobility of the child, i.e., elements more typical of product engineering than pure costume design.
For engineering and manufacturing professionals, the project illustrates how design tools and manufacturing workflows can enable social-impact efforts. It showcases the value of detailed modeling early in the process to reduce fit issues during fabrication. It also demonstrates how cross-discipline teams (mechanical, electrical, fabrication) can collaborate around a common CAD environment.
The partnership between SolidWorks and Magic Wheelchair is more than a feel-good story; it’s a demonstration of engineering in service of inclusion, of CAD and fabrication tools enabling highly customized builds, and of how design thinking applied to non-traditional use-cases can yield inspiring results.