TopMod is a powerful program for making exotic forms. Once you have a basic understanding of how the program works, you'll find that it can be a quick and easy solution to generate a finished model or a model to export into another program for further manipulation.

TopMod operates in a manner similar to SketchUp; it works by building a model from shapes that are extruded into forms. However, TopMod has a different approach. It constructs a model by starting with a primitive; the faces of the primitive are then extruded in order to build a form. With the addition of cutting and connecting tools, the faces, edges, and vertices of a model can then be manipulated. With some planning, a complex form can be generated quickly and then remeshed into an interesting organic model.

In this chapter, we'll examine TopMod's basic set of tools by making some models that we can use to test support structures. A printed support structure is added to a model when there are areas where the filament...