Making a Teardrop Camper in DraftSight with Xyla Foxlin

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Xyla Foxlin is making her own teardrop camper in just over 3 weeks using DraftSight. But who is she? And more importantly what drives someone to design, construct, and hit the road with a 2 wheel habitat on a tight deadline?

Before Making a Teardrop Camper in DraftSight

Well to start, Xyla has been a dreamer since her youth. As a teenager she was captain of her high school robotics team in Lexington, MA. The excitement she felt bringing designs off the page and into the real world made Xyla realize what she wanted to do with her life. She went on to attend Case Western, where she received a B.S.E. in General Engineering and a concentration in Mechatronics and Creative Technology, as well as a minor in Studio Art. While in college, she started an educational non-profit Beauty and the Bolt, a free makerspace that creates accessible and engaging STEM content for their YouTube channel with one goal being to encourage the interest of female and minority students in the STEM field.

Never one to be idle, during college Xyla also founded and served as CEO of Parihug, a company with the goal of integrating emotions and technology. An early success was a plush bear with a robotic underpinning that allows the user to “hug” anyone in the world with an internet-connected sensory response. When one bear is hugged, its pair-bear in another location vibrates in real-time. If both parties hug their bears at the same time – a heartbeat is emitted. Xyla has said her motivation was to connect people separated by physical distance and circumstance, especially children who might need a hug from a faraway parent.

Femininity and Engineering are Not Mutually Exclusive

Type Xyla Foxlin into a search engine and one of the top autocompletes is Xyla Foxlin Miss America. What’s the story there? Was she Miss America? Not quite, but Xyla was crowned Miss Greater Cleveland 2018 in the Miss America program. Beautiful, intelligent, and driven – Xyla wants to inspire the next generation of innovators by making awesome projects that she shares along the way on YouTube. Xyla makes engineering approachable, understandable, and fun with her videos and tutorials. She likes to share her passion and inspire others to explore theirs. As a company that celebrates women in technology and has firm commitments in place to accelerate diversity, we were glad to see the role DraftSight played in creating Xyla’s ambitious project.

Teardrop Camper Build Time with Xyla Foxlin

Let’s talk about that teardrop camper we mentioned at the start and how it was made in 3 weeks! Well 3 weeks plus a day, which is still unbelievable!

Xyla recruited some friends and colleagues to help her realize her vision. Between the parts of construction she could do solo and the parts that needed more hands, Xyla was able to turn her concept into a finished product at a remarkable speed. Part of that was the tool empowering Xyla, “the only reason I was able to get this project done in three weeks is because I designed it in CAD ahead of time.”

The tool that allowed this vision to become a reality was DraftSight, a trusted 2D drafting and 3D design experience from the makers of SOLIDWORKS. With DraftSight, you have the ability to create, edit, and view 2D and 3D file formats like DWG. DraftSight works seamlessly with SOLIDWORKS, so you can share your work with other collaborators and makers.

Xyla shared that, “a huge number of things we use on a daily basis are manufactured from stock flat materials that are cut by CNC Mills or laser cutters and folded or assembled kind of like origami – this process allows us to know exactly how much material we will need and allows us to build gigantic things just like this project. CAD is an indispensable tool.”

DraftSight ticked the boxes with:

  •          Productivity tools to accelerate the build
  •          Amazing file/opening saving capabilities
  •          Variety of licensing options that fit any team or project
  •          Expanded data and project management capabilities within the cloud
  •          Improved software ROI

Watch Xyla’s full video to see the journey and how her camper came out: Building a Teardrop Trailer in 3 Weeks: Start to Finish

Interested in learning more about DraftSight? Join us for the DraftSight Virtual event October 25-27, 2022. Get tips, tricks, and best practices: the #DraftSight Virtual event features a diverse agenda demonstrating how CAD users of all levels benefit from DraftSights’ power and ease of use. Register today!

Meaghan Murphy

Meaghan Murphy

Meaghan holds her Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, NY. She went on to complete a dual MBA and Master of Science in Marketing from Suffolk University in Boston, MA. She has a passion for writing, education, nature, science, and technology.