Book Image

Simplifying 3D Printing with OpenSCAD

By : Colin Dow
5 (1)
Book Image

Simplifying 3D Printing with OpenSCAD

5 (1)
By: Colin Dow

Overview of this book

Want to bring your 3D designs to life with OpenSCAD, but don’t know where to start? Simplifying 3D Printing with OpenSCAD will teach you the key skills so that you can focus on your ideas, not troubleshooting your 3D printer. With the help of this book, you’ll build a solid foundation in 3D printing technology, the software used for designing your objects, and an analysis of the G-code produced by the 3D printer slicer software. You’ll also get to know your 3D printer and find out how to set up a printing job effortlessly — from configuring the parameters to build well-defined designs. Consider yourself a practical learner? Use real-world examples such as designing and printing a 3D name badge, model rocket, and laptop stand, to dive into the world of 3D printers build your skillset. By the end of this 3D printing book, you'll be ready to start designing and printing your own 3D printed products using OpenSCAD and being your ideas into reality.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
1
Part 1: Exploring 3D Printing
5
Part 2: Learning OpenSCAD
9
Part 3: Projects
13
Part 4: The Future

Adding a base plate to our 3D-printed name badge

To complete our 3D-printed name badge, we require a base plate for the text. We will start with a basic shape before we implement the code to build a base plate with a series of modules. We will then add our text to complete the design of the 3D-printed name badge. Let's start with a module to create a basic 2D shape.

Creating our first shape

We will start off the design of our base plate with a simple 2D design. As with the code we covered in the Creating our PVC pipe hook section of Chapter 4, Getting Started with OpenSCAD, we take the intersection of a circle and square to give us a basic first shape. We will put this code inside a module. Let's get started, as follows:

  1. Create a new OpenSCAD file and type in the following code:
    module create_first_shape()
    {
        intersection()
        {
            translate([20,0])
        ...