3d modelling Archives - Perfect 3D Printing Filament

Let’s start 2020 with something positive – reflecting on the awesomeness of 2019. 2019 was a productive year for us at SelfCAD. We listened to your feedback, fixed bugs and other nasty things and improved most of our tools. We added a bunch of useful new features. Which one do you like the best?

Here are 10 SelfCAD improvements of 2019 graded by how much they added to your modeling experience. If you’d like to learn more, please visit our FAQ and the SelfCAD Manual.

#10 – Revolve tool can make objects with holes now

2018 Revolve tool closed all the holes. 2020 revolve tool doesn’t. You get the gist. We took a long, hard look at this tool, which creates a new shape out of revolving (for example) a plane. We realized it doesn’t make sense to automatically plug all the holes, and it sometimes makes creating the shape you want unnecessarily difficult.

You can also revolve around any shape by selecting Revolve Around Edges/Profiles or even guides in the ‘Settings’ section. You no longer need to merge objects to revolve around them.

#9 – Snap Tool

Snap tool is another quality of life tool. You can use it to snap any shape to any location in the workspace. You can also use it to snap and collapse vertices. When used with ‘Remove Duplicate’ tool found in the Utilities section it will remove details in the vertices.

#8 – Drawing Tool Improvements

We’ve made a lot of changes to our drawing tool in 2019.

We’ve added smoothness to the text tool and real-time intersection. Real-time… what?

Before, when you drew something which has a hole in it, you were losing that hole after generating a 3D object from the drawing. Now, this tool creates a hole automatically if you indicate your object should have one!

Additionally, when you use the FreeHand Tool and set the height settings to zero, it will automatically create a profile.

#7 – Flatten, Inflate

SelfCAD added some crucial tools to your toolbox. Flatten and Inflate do exactly what it sounds like – Flatten makes the object gradually flatter, while Inflate will inflate the selected area like a balloon. Flatten is useful for quickly slicing a sphere, among other things.

#6 – Gear Generator

Our (relatively) new Gear Generator is located in the ‘3D Shapes’ category. No need to model your gears by hand, this flexible tool is here to save your time.

#5 – The Marquee Selection Tool

You can now select polygons by dragging your mouse.

If you drag towards the right, it will select only the included faces. But if you drag towards the left you will select everything. We wanted selection to be as convenient as possible.

#4 – Part Selection Tool

This is a nifty tool that allows everyone to select specific parts of the model.

#3 – New Material Section ( including Shadows, Shininess, Light Sources and Targets )

In 2019 we added additional features to make SelfCAD models look even better while you model. You can now control shadows, shininess of the material, decide if the model is a light source etc. It will work even better with rendering!

#2 – Improved Slicer

The new and improved SelfCAD slicer, we’ve practically remade it. The new menu, more options than ever and you can now get you a preview of how your model will be 3D printed. Which is pretty neat, you have to agree.

#1 – Animation

In October, we added an animator to SelfCAD. It’s our first step to make SelfCAD a choice for every creator.

When you click the record button, you can change the color, move or transform your 3D model to make a clip and then put these clips together to create something unique.

Up next: we are planning to add rendering in 2020 and a rigger in the future, making this feature feel more complete.

I hope you enjoyed reading this list – create your free SelfCAD account by clicking here.

The post The Top 10 SelfCAD Improvements of 2019 appeared first on 3DPrint.com | The Voice of 3D Printing / Additive Manufacturing.

Rhino

After doing research on how we are going to attack this series with our toolbox of resources, we are setting up our environment for exploration. Setting up the build environment is simple enough, but it is vital. Even with our build environment, there are specific subtle things we need to do for our purposes of creation. We will go through some of these items in this article while highlighting some other integral parts.

Firstly we need to download Rhino for our modeling purposes. To do so check out this link for a free 90 day trial version of Rhino. After going through the download instructions, we can now use Rhino. When I first opened Rhino, frankly I was intimidated. I have used various 3D modeling environments and software, but Rhino’s interface is a lot to handle. No disrespect to Rhino as a package as it is great, but it seems to have a steep learning curve. It has various plugins and tools ready for your disposal. Something important to remember is that having various tools is often not the best route when building anything. This is a methodology I take in terms of technical project building as well as physical product manufacturing. My goal with Rhino is to build parametric designs through coding, so I have a precise route to learning. This allows me to get to the meat of what I want to do quickly. I would not benefit from a large overview of Rhino at this point. A lot of what Rhino has tool wise does look intriguing, but we will stay focused when using it. Otherwise our curiosity may let us stray from our path to getting things done.

Download Window for Rhinoceros

The biggest advantage of Rhino is the number of plugins available for it. These plugins are the essence of utility. We will focus on two plugins for Rhino in this series. The first plugin of interest to use is Grasshopper. Grasshopper is an algorithmic modeling plugin for Rhino. It uses a visual programming language vs. a typical text-based coding language. It also gives you the ability to reference geometrical objects from Rhino. The ability to create intriguing geometry quickly and with comparative ease is the main benefit of Grasshopper.

Grasshopper Build Environment

The second plugin of choice for us is Weaverbird. Weaverbird is a topology based modeler. It gives a designer the ability to make known subdivisions and transformation operators. This plugin allows us to automate subdivisions and reconstructing of shapes. It is a great plugin due to its ability to help in fabrication as well as rapid prototyping of ideas.

Weaverbird

Something I appreciate from Rhino is how extensive the program is from just looking at it briefly. Various software packages I have used are expansive, but Rhino seems to take things to a different level. The mind of an architect is very expansive, so their tool of choice needs to have various tools within its utility belt. I am excited to somewhat learn the mindset of an “architect” through operating in this program.

For the next installment of this series, we will try to make a simple 2D parametric design that can be extruded into 3D form. I realize the importance of 2D drawing and going to the 3D level as it makes product creation much easier. It flows better and it makes the ability to iterate more intuitive. So look out for that in our next article.

The post Coding for 3D Part 4: Rhino, Grasshopper and Weaverbird Setup appeared first on 3DPrint.com | The Voice of 3D Printing / Additive Manufacturing.