Planning out the design

When working on projects, we need to first plan out the design, thinking about what exactly we want to accomplish. If you do a Google search for bicycle water bottle holders, you’ll see a multitude of different ideas for various styles of bikes. We want to come up with a simply designed, 3D-printed water bottle holder that will hold a typical 8-oz plastic water bottle. It will need to be held in place on the bicycle pole with a grip or a clamp with a screw for tightening.

Now that we know what it is we want to accomplish, let’s start to plan out the design.

I have taken a photo of the location where I want the bottle holder to be placed on my bicycle. For my bicycle, I want it on the pole underneath the handlebars, and I’d like to make a bottle holder for my wife’s bike as well in the same location:

Figure 6.1 – My bicycle with a tapered pole

You can see via the photo of my bicycle that I...