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)

Chapter 2. Beginning Blender

3D printers need 3D models to print. Those models don't just come out of nowhere. You will need imagination, a little time, and software to create 3D models for the things you want to print. Never have there been more software options for creating 3D models—professional and free options. In this series, the software of choice is called Blender.

This chapter will introduce Blender, how to set it up, and some basic and mid-level functionality. Knowing the content of this chapter will get you over Blender's infamous learning curve and provide the basic knowledge and reference material necessary to follow along with future projects. We'll cover these topics:

  • Why Blender?

  • Downloading and installing Blender

  • The default view

  • The best settings

  • Object creation

  • Navigating the view

  • Transforming

  • Controlling transformations

  • Selecting

  • The Edit mode

  • Blender to real life

  • Exporting an STL