The Process:
First, my partner, Ali, and I sketched as many bottle opener designs as we could think of. They started falling into categories: the hook-over-top kind, the half-moon kind, the mostly-circular kind. After we had found all three of these basic designs, we started trying to find ways to make one of these basic designs cute. We chose the hook-over-top style and started brainstorming interesting shapes (mostly animals like fish or a running fox).
After the brainstorming process, we narrowed the selection to four: Gaping Fish and Tail Fish (two different locations on a fish shape for the opening mechanism), Smiley Face (a half-moon style opener), and the basic circle. Using a Pugh chart, we narrowed the options on the basis of Strength, Comfort, Attractiveness and Size, and ended up settling on the Gaping Fish model.
At this point we had to quantify the design: how wide should the mouth be? How curved? After measuring the bottle cap itself, we came up with a sketch and transfered it to foam core.
From the foam core, we proceeded to SolidWorks! We had some trouble trimming our circles and curves to meet at points (getting rid of extra interior curves), but after we had mastered that, and figured out how to "fix" lines so that the body of the fish would be the same no matter how we modified the mouth, it became much easier. The "fillet" tool was extremely helpful to keep the lines of the fish smooth and organic.
Finally, we could print our bottle opener. Unfortunately, the plastic was chewed by the edge of the cap, and the fish was ineffective even after modifying the nose to be larger (to make it a better lever point). In order to have a working model, the fish was abandoned and replaced by Ali's design of a half-moon shape with a filed edge, which was the final model.
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