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)

Navigating the view


Because Blender is all about working in 3D, but computer screens are flat, it is important to know how to change how you're looking at something in Blender.

Note

All of the following commands can also be found in the 3D View menu under View | View Navigation; however, since adjusting the view happens so frequently, it is recommended to learn the mouse and keyboard shortcuts instead of navigating menus to do this.

Rotating the view

In Blender, you can change the angle of the view by:

  • Clicking and holding the middle mouse button and moving the mouse pointer.

  • Pressing 2 or 8 on the number pad to rotate the view up and down.

  • Pressing 4 or 6 on the number pad to rotate the view left and right.

The point at which the view is rotating can change. Follow these steps to center the view rotation on a specific object:

  1. Select the object.

  2. Press the . (period) key on the number pad.

The selected object will fill the view and all view rotations will now center on that object:

Jumping to rotation...