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)

Flattening the bottom


An FFF-friendly 3D model needs to have a solid, flat base. There is more than one way the bottom of a model can be flattened. For one, the geometry can be edited to be flat. Alternatively, a floor object can be created and cut out of the object using a Boolean modifier. Since this project is using the Subdivision Surface modifier, editing the geometry can be complicated, so the floor method will be used.

Looking at the model from the front Ortho view (Numpad 1 and Numpad 5), it's clear that the parts of the tentacles that sit below the X and Y axes (the red or green line, depending on the view) is where the model needs to be cut off to make a flat, printable base:

So, let's get started:

  1. First, exit Edit mode (Tab).

  2. Be sure the 3D cursor is at the 3D View's origin point (Shift + C). Then create a cube (Shift + A) by navigating to Mesh | Cube:

    The cube cannot be seen in solid view because it's completely inside the octopus, so with the cube still selected, switch to local...