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.

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3D Printing Designs: Octopus Pencil Holder
Joe Larson
Feb, 2016 | 104 pages
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Table of Contents (10 chapters)
3D Printing Designs: Octopus Pencil Holder
3D Printing Designs: Octopus Pencil Holder
Credits
Credits
About the Author
About the Author
About the Reviewer
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Preface
Free Chapter
1
3D Printing Basics
3D Printing Basics
What is 3D printing?
What to design for?
How do FFF printers work?
The anatomy of a print
FFF design considerations
Summary
2
Beginning Blender
Beginning Blender
Why Blender?
Downloading and installing Blender
The default view
The best settings
Object creation
Navigating the view
Transforming the object
Controlling transformations
Duplicating objects
Object selection
The Edit mode
Incremental saving
Blender to real life
Exporting an STL
Summary
3
The Octopus Pencil Holder
The Octopus Pencil Holder
Planning the project
The first basic shape
Smoothing the mesh with modifiers
Bending the tentacles
Flattening the bottom
Renaming objects
Adding a pencil cup
Adding a face
Finishing touches
Summary
Index
Index

Exporting an STL

Before they can be used in a 3D printer, 3D models created in Blender have to be changed to a file that the 3D printer can use. Blender's default file format isn't readable by 3D printers and can sometimes contain additional information that the 3D printers don't need.

Most 3D printers use a file format called STereoLithography (STL), which contains just the final shape of the object. To export a finished model to an STL for 3D printing, follow these steps:

  1. Select the model or models to be exported.

  2. From the Info panel, choose File | Export | Stl (.stl).

  3. Navigate to a chosen folder or directory.

  4. Give the file a name.

  5. Click on the Export STL button or press the Enter key:

Now, the STL file will be available to send to a 3D printer or printer service.

If multiple objects are selected, the exported STL will have the objects in the same relative orientation to each other; therefore, it's important that they don't overlap and are printable as oriented. It's often preferable to save separate...

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