Book Image

3D Printing Designs: Octopus Pencil Holder

By : Joe Larson
Book Image

3D Printing Designs: Octopus Pencil Holder

By: Joe Larson

Overview of this book

This book will cover the very basic but essential techniques you need to model an organic and functional object for 3D printing using Blender. Starting with pen and paper and then moving on to the computer, you will create your first project in Blender, add basic geometric shapes, and use techniques such as extruding and subdividing to transform these shapes into complex meshes. You will learn how modifiers can automatically refine the shape further and combine multiple shapes into a single 3D printable model. By the end of the book, you will have gained enough practical hands-on experience to be able to create a 3D printable object of your choice, which in this case is a 3D print-ready octopus pencil holder.
Table of Contents (10 chapters)

Incremental saving


It is always a good idea to save your work frequently. To save your work in Blender, choose File | Save from the info panel or press Ctrl + S. Then, navigate to a chosen folder or directory, give the file a name, and click on the Save As Blender File button or press the Enter key.

It is recommended that each Blender project gets its own folder and that all projects be saved in a location that will be easy to find later.

It is also a good idea, while learning especially, to give each version of the file you save a slightly different name. This way, there is a history of the work done and it's easy to go back in the case of a mistake that isn't discovered immediately. This is called incremental saving and is simple to do in Blender. Simply choose File | Save As or press Ctrl + Shift + S to get to the save menu. If the project has been saved previously, it should already have a name. Next to the filename, there are plus and minus buttons:

By clicking on those buttons, the filename...