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)

Object creation


Most tutorials for Blender start with navigating the 3D View. But in Blender, the default scene is kind of boring for this, just a cube that looks the same from every angle. Instead, let's make something more interesting to look at.

First, let's look at how to clear the default scene:

  1. Select all the objects in the scene by going to the 3D View menu and choosing Select | (De)select all twice or pressing the A key twice. Everything in the scene should have an orange line around it. If not, do it again.

  2. Delete everything by going to the 3D View menu and choosing Object | Delete or pressing the X key.

Your 3D View should now have nothing but the grid, which can be thought of as the floor of the scene.

To create an object, go to 3D View menu, choose Add or press Shift + A.

In the menu that pops up are all the basic objects that can be inserted into the scene. Blender offers many basic shapes that can serve as a starting point for anything you want to create. Sometimes, a basic object...