3d Printing and Me
My journey begins with some tinkering around and loving all the free .stl files on Thingiverse. I've had an absolute hoot printing off different RPG characters or making terrain for my weekly Gloomhaven game. I also thoroughly enjoy following people's builds on Reddit.
Designing and creating in a space where my poor coordination isn't a kick in the socks is also great! Snapping lines to my mouse. I suppose the same might be said of Adobe...whatever.
Designing and creating in a space where my poor coordination isn't a kick in the socks is also great! Snapping lines to my mouse. I suppose the same might be said of Adobe...whatever.
Different projects from my students
As I'm committing to getting much better at this whole adventure I decided to take the Coursera course on 3D printing: https://www.coursera.org/learn/3d-printing-software/home/welcome
At first I realized I needed to investigate the difference between Blender and Fusion 360 (https://all3dp.com/2/fusion-360-vs-blender-cad-software-compared/) Some big take aways:
At first I realized I needed to investigate the difference between Blender and Fusion 360 (https://all3dp.com/2/fusion-360-vs-blender-cad-software-compared/) Some big take aways:
Features of Blender:
|
Features of Fusion 360:
|
Another place my voyage of discovery took me was (back to) SketchUp by Trimble. I've explored this in the past but never with this new 3D printing lens on. Regardless, it looks like a great place to practice and develop my design skills. https://edu.sketchup.com/app/
First up in my Coursera course:
Intro to design sketching. Challenge #1 - learning point perspective. It took me a while, but I'm figuring it out. Slowly.
The first homework was to draw. I'm practicing on the SketchBook app as well, on paper. Big take aways: strong, bold lines and draw from the shoulder. Lines: Draw 20 horizontal lines. These lines should be freehand, with a starting point and end point. No stopping and starting; draw complete, powerful lines. Circles: Draw 20 complete circles of a variety of diameters. These circles should be freehand and complete. No stopping and starting; draw complete, powerful lines. Rectangles: Draw 20 rectangles. These rectangles should be freehand with a range of sizes. No stopping and starting; draw complete, powerful lines. Isometric cubes: Draw 5 cubes of various sizes. These are isometric, so lines heading in the same direction are parallel. Draw bold/heavy outside lines and lighter inside lines. Perspective cubes: Draw 5 3-point perspective cubes of various sizes.These are not isometric, so lines heading in the same direction need to go towards a vanishing point. Draw bold/heavy outside lines and lighter inside lines. I had a few different challenges in building my design sketching skills. - Right off the bat, I didn't know I tended to do all of my drawing from my wrist which always makes my lines shaky. I took the tips from the instructor to use my shoulder - which makes sense since that's the case with a lot of other skills. Use the whole body! - 3-point perspective was my either archnemesis in this project. I really struggle with the disappearing points intersecting to create a cube. Check out the YouTube video on the right about how 3D Design impacted Star Wars Diving into TinkerCad - a big takeaway is the application of logical Boolean to the shapes. As they say, "The action of adding, subtracting, or combining primitive shapes is called a Boolean operation." - Here a couple of my fun designs Keychain and House Redesign - There's a lot to do with TinkerCAD. I especially appreciate being able to convert to Minecraft and Lego. - My biggest helpful hint: the "f" key focuses in on the selected object Blender - the "n" key opens up an object's menu Diving into Fusion 360 Vocabulary: extrude - push or pull a face parametric modelling - primitive - basic shapes like cubes and spheres - One thing I really like in both Fusion and Tinker is the little cube in the corner to help move around the object and view from different angles - The simple workflow is nice and you can "go back in time" to check things. It also save things in nicely organized files. |
|
Mini-lesson with the one and only Jeff Eisen
Ultimaker 2+ Extended
|
Interesting dives
- 3d Printing of architecture. A lot of ancient buildings have been scanned and their templates live in the Internet - A really cool Adobe workflow video https://vimeo.com/36092192. Taking something from Photoshop and adding more details until it's an outstanding 3D example. Dream 3d Printer
Snapmaker 2.0: Modular 3-in-1 3D Printers Trials and Tribulations of Printing |