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

Pulling out the rays


We'll add more details to the face in a minute. First, let's finish out the main shape of the sun by pulling out the rays of the sun. The goal here is to make something curvy and artistic to look at, so for these parts, symmetry needs to be turned off first. Follow these steps:

  1. On the left-hand side of the 3D View, navigate to the the Symmetry/Lock part of the Tools tab in the Tool Shelf and click on the X button under Mirror to toggle X-axis symmetry off.

  2. Switch to the Snake Hook brush (K).

  3. Adjust the view and change the Radius (F) so that the brush is about big enough to cover about an eighth of the edge of the face.

  4. Adjust the strength of the Brush (Shift + F) to between 0.75 and 0.9.

  5. From the top of the head, being sure the center of the brush catches at least a little bit of the edge of the head, start drawing while moving the mouse in a curve away from the body.

    If the rays are being pulled out too far, undo the action, adjust the strength, and try again. If the brush...