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

Drawing the face


In this section, we will make the face for our puzzle. Under the Brush tool, there is a whole palette of tools to use:

The default brush, F SculptDraw, is the most common and is already selected, so we'll start with it. Switch to the Top view (Numpad 7) and follow these steps:

  1. From the middle, nearer to the bottom, click and drag in a curve to make a smile:

  2. Repeat the action a little lower down to finish the lips:

Tip

Remember, you can undo (Ctrl + Z) until the lips look the way you want them to.

Because of the symmetry setting, anything done on the left is repeated on the right, reducing work and making it easy for you to make a pleasing shape.

Because of dynamic topology, the rough polygons of the original shape are smoothed out so that all the details of the drawn shapes show through. This effect is easier to see if the view is switched to wireframe mode (Z).

Dynamic topology will continue to add detail where we need it as we sculpt:

  1. In the Tool Box, increase the Radius setting...