Book Image

3D Printing Designs: Fun and Functional Projects

By : Joe Larson
Book Image

3D Printing Designs: Fun and Functional Projects

By: Joe Larson

Overview of this book

3D printing has revolutionized the way that global industries conceptualize and design products for mass consumption. Considered as the next “trillion-dollar” business, every industry is in the race to equip its personnel with techniques to prototype and simplify complex manufacturing process. This book will take you through some simple to complex and effective principles of designing 3D printed objects using Blender. There is a comprehensive coverage of projects such as a 3D print-ready octopus pencil holder, which will teach you how to add basic geometric shapes, and use techniques such as extruding and subdividing to transform these shapes into complex meshes. Furthermore, you’ll learn to use various techniques to derive measurements for an object, model these objects using Blender, organize the parts into layers, and later combine them to create the desired object with the help of a 3D printable SD card holder ring design project. The final project will help you master the techniques of designing simple to complex puzzles models for 3D printing. Through the course of the book, we'll explore various robust sculpting methods supported by Blender to create objects. You’ll move, rotate, and scale the object, and manipulate the view. You’ll edit objects with actions such as bends or curves, similar to drawing or building up a clay structure of different shapes and sizes. By the end of the book, you will have gained thorough practical hands-on experience to be able to create a real-world 3D printable object of your choice.
Table of Contents (14 chapters)
3D Printing Designs: Fun and Functional Projects
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Adding a pencil cup


The octopus model so far is appealing, but it can also be made functional. The plan for this project was a cup holder, so it needs to have the shape changed so that pencils can be put inside it.

  1. To start, temporarily turn off the Subdivision Surface modifier by locating the Subsurf modifier in the Modifiers tab and clicking on the eye icon for it. Now the simplified geometry is easier to work with:

  2. Go to Face Select (Ctrl + Tab) mode in Edit mode (Tab). Now, select the topmost face of the octopus:

  3. Switch to Wireframe (Z) and front Ortho view (Numpad 1) and Extrude (E) the top face down into the body. Stop just a little above the red X axis line:

    Note

    It may be necessary to scale (S) the bottom of the cup a little so that it fits inside the body.

  4. Now the shape is generally right for a pencil holder. Turn the Subdivision Surface modifier back on by clicking on its eye icon in the Modifiers tab. You'll notice that the cup bottom is a bit too round to be a space-efficient cup:

  5. In...