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Buildings in Blender for 3D Printing.


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  • RMweb Gold

I've been looking into creating buildings using Blender that can be printed with a 3D printer.  I'll get the disclaimer out at the very beginning of this thread: 

  • there are a lot of people on here who are much better 3D modellers,
  • there is a lot of 3D software out there that can also do the job, but I only know Blender in any depth, so I'll be concentrating on this,
  • there will be many ways to skin a cat, and if you're mad enough to be using Blender and have different ideas, please pile in with them

 

All I can show you is a workflow that currently works for me.

 

I'm using Blender 2.91.0 from here: https://www.blender.org/download/ . The software is free, and has had a major upgrade since I put those other tutorials up a few years ago. Although it's still a big program, it's a lot more intuitive than it was before, and to be honest, you'd only be using a very small subset of the available functionality. I think this keeps it manageable.

 

727669344_setupscreen.jpg.fbc4a043292e2e827598683014d61e4a.jpg

 

Setup the Environment

 

After opening up Blender:

  1. select the cube delete it
  2. hover over the margin between the main screen and the playback pane, right click, click on 'join areas', and move the mouse downwards to delete the playback pane.
  3. make sure the layout workspace is available. If you can't see it, click the + button at the top of the screen (to the right of scripting in the illustration above) and choose it from the list. You can delete all of the others except for modelling by right clicking on each one and choosing delete.
  4. on the right, click on the scene properties tab (looks like a tear drop), click on Units to open it, and choose the following options
  5. Unit system: metric
  6. Unit Scale: 0.001
  7. Length Millimeters
  8. Click on the small V shown in the red box next to the '5' in the diagram and set Viewport Overlays -> Grid Scale to 0.001

 

preferences.jpg.e2f9c0411c03419739dd60f0a3b2752c.jpg

 

Setup the Preferences

 

Now we need to add a couple of helper modules.

 

  1. In the menu system, click on edit -> preferences,
  2. when the preferences window is displayed, click on add-ons (in blue here)
  3. go to search (top right) and start typing import
  4. choose Import Images as Planes
  5. we'll probably have a go with Archipack, so select that too. On this one, click on the little arrow to open up the details, and click on render preset thumbs.
  6. Now, if you save this as your default startup position, and you'll not need to do this again. To do this, in the menu system, click File -> Defaults (at the bottom) -> Save Startup File

 

I'm still looking at Archipack to help with the modelling, and although it looks good, I'm not sure that it will work out the box for 3D printing. One case in point is that the default guttering it creates wouldn't be printable. With this in mind, I'll show how I did the modelling, and then perhaps afterwards will write up some notes on Archipack.

 

>> The next post will be importing reference images and setting up the walls.

 

Blender Course on YouTube

 

Finally, there is also a general Blender course available below. Blender Guru seems to be the most popular Blender education channel on Youtube, so it's worth having a look at. This will give some more starter information, and you could even get a zero calorie donut out of it.

 

 

Edited by JCL
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  • RMweb Gold

Hi Kris

 

I've had a quick look, and while I can see a range of roof textures, I can't see any wall textures at all - even with the thumbnails calculated.

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  • RMweb Gold

As Blender's code is Open Source it should be possible to generate a plug-in to make any brick bond. I failed the programers aptitude test so I don't think I'm your man to write it:wacko:. Although I presume reverse engineering open source code may be allowed, if so it could be possible to adapt the other plugin code. Doing the queen closers might prove interesting though.:blink:

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  • RMweb Gold

A sleeper bond is very easy to do, garden bond and English bond require a bit more work, but to be honest, it's not exactly onerous, especially with judicious use of the copy and paste function. I'll put something up over the next couple of days to illustrate how I do walls.

 

 

Edited by JCL
Added the video I meant to add!
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46 minutes ago, Kris said:

Thanks for the responses. I was hoping that there would be an option for random stone courses. These are horrible to make. 

I did have a bit of success with my laser cutter a couple of years ago by finding a wall picture that had distinct stone courses, importing into Inkscape, using the trace bitmap function there that creates paths out of the courses, then create laser cutting files out of them.

Downside was that the files very quickly became super huge (talking hundreds of MB  size)  if more than a postcard sized wall was attempted and my laptop at the time would  faint from all the hard work.

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  • RMweb Gold

The problem with trying to do 'random' stone is that when a stone mason, or whoever is laying out the stones, does so, they carefully choose which stone to go where. This means it's very difficult to actually do really random, as per a computer, which could decide that twelve of the same size of stone in a row is random:wacko:, you need some kind of fuzzy logic in the algorithm as well. And there's ensuring that there are no vertical mortar courses through more than one row unless it's next to a really big stone. My very dormant code writing part of my brain is starting to try and kick in but as I am working full time at two jobs it may be a long time before I can do anything about it.

 

I worked, in the 1990's, on the mapping data that is now used for Sat Navs, using a program called 'Arc Soft' on Sun SPARC Stations. The software developers allowed us to write our own 'extension' programs in a very high level language to enhance the usability of the base program. I wrote a small (2,000 line) extension to move the Key for map printouts so that it didn't go over the critical line on the base map. Easy stuff really as there was a limited number of places the Key could be in. That took me about a month to get right so you can see my work pace is not exactly lightning:rolleyes:.

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  • RMweb Premium
14 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

I did have a bit of success with my laser cutter a couple of years ago by finding a wall picture that had distinct stone courses, importing into Inkscape, using the trace bitmap function there that creates paths out of the courses, then create laser cutting files out of them.

Downside was that the files very quickly became super huge (talking hundreds of MB  size)  if more than a postcard sized wall was attempted and my laptop at the time would  faint from all the hard work.

They still become super huge and eat bandwidth when you are using an online program. You can wait a goodly amount of time for the program to catch up. 

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I did also have a bit of a play with displacement maps - find an image of bricks/stone wall and  use Gimp or similar to create displacement maps which can then  be plugged into Blender. It does actually create 3D geometry as opposed to just a rendered image, however you need a clean  image of the intended wall, or at least some wall that you can use in your model.  Again, files can grow very large with  many polygons depending on how detailed the surface of your stones/bricks is.

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  • RMweb Gold

Textures create huge files, best to use the spray from just too far away so that the paint creates some texture. Having said that I looked closely at the Wills injection moulded sheets of stone (I know I lead an exciting life:rolleyes:) and they just seemed to have a few low poly shapes for the front of the stones and not as much detail as I expected. So it may be able to get away with less detail than we think. I did find a free texture of stone and load it into Tinkercad and it printed out okay on an FDM printer, although it was for a small footbridge abutment, about 40mm X 20mm, so not a huge wall.

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  • RMweb Gold

Next one: How to import a reference image and scale it. I'm importing a photo, but the same steps can be used to import a drawing (they're both image files, after all). I also scale the image, and import a guide that will help me later when setting up some brickwork.

 

 

 

 

I hope this is useful to someone.

 

 

Edited by JCL
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Hi , I tried Blender and others some time ago but gave up due to the complexity / learning curve. I like the look of the new Blander version and may give it another try. Your video is great, please make some more to help us .

Thanks,

Pete.

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Hi,

I downloaded Blender today and modified the settings as per JCL's short video. However I can't uncover simple stuff such as how to draw a simple line yet, so at first glance it doesn't seem very intutitive, unlike some other programmes that I have tried.

I hope some videos are posted here to help us with model building & 3D printing. Meantime I will look again on the web for information/training though most videos seem to be based on previous versions.

 

Pete

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Don't think of Blender as being a CAD style package, there are 'primitives' such as spherrs, cubes  and so on but you won't find drawing' tools like Fusion or Sketchup has, but bear with JCL and all will be revealed.

 

Or watch the Tutorial videos in the earlier post where you make a doughnut. His videos are probably the best ones since they introduce tools a bit at a time as you need them rather than just run through what every button does.

Edited by monkeysarefun
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  • RMweb Gold

Here we go, a video about creating and messing around with objects in the viewport. How to create cubes, cylinders, spheres and such, and how to get them bent out of shape.

 

 

I've not opened up comments on YouTube as I thought it would be better to keep them all here.

 

Update: I realise now I forgot to upload the first video into the post above - doh! There should be three now.

 

Next one, walls - no, honest.

Edited by JCL
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  • RMweb Gold

Part 4, and we're making some naked walls. I'm going to show two different methods for creating a room. One with 4 cubes, and the other with a single cube. I also introduce snapping, solidifying faces and object origin points.

 

 

If you're following along, why not see if you can make the body of a lighthouse? You'll need a cylinder, it'll be narrower at the top and the bottom (we did scaling in a previous window), and your lighthouse should be hollow, not a single solid block.

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Reading back over this, specifically concerning the random stone, yes modeling anything "Random" with any 3D package will quickly start to generate massive files, to get a good effect you need a high density mesh or you will just see a lot of facets rather than smooth curves on your stone, depending on the effect you are looking for, you might want to consider adding a recess in the model surface and simply putting on a layer of textured card or plastic, this is especially useful if the random stone is only a small part of the structure such as infill wall panels or a plinth that the building sits on which requires minimal cutting, 

 

If you want to model using a texture map then experiment with the colour channels of the image you are using, sometimes one particular channel (red, green or blue) may provide a better base for generating the texture than any of the others, a lot also depends on the software you are using 

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  • RMweb Gold

Thanks @Pete22.

 

@DGO, I hold my hands up to not being an expert, but more of a bodger who has found a way to get what he needs out of the software. I'm always up for help and advice myself, and if you see me advising something that looks a bit screwy, please don't hesitate to let me know. :) One question I have for the texture mapping is, does this produce an output that affects the mesh and can be 3D printed? Or is it more of a virtual thing?

 

In the meantime, today's tutorial - wooden wall coverings - vertical planks, board and baton, horizontal planks and sloped siding.

After that 22 minute long objects video, I'll keep the next few to around 10 minutes if I can

 

 

Edited by JCL
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1 hour ago, JCL said:

One question I have for the texture mapping is, does this produce an output that affects the mesh and can be 3D printed? Or is it more of a virtual thing

 

 

Can be either. If your intended  output is a rendered picture or a surface to use in say a computer game or animation, you can create a textured wall that looks textured but if printed would be flat - it uses lights, shadows and highlights to give the impression of texture and surface.

 

You can however use a displacement or normal  map (these can be created in Gimp or in specialised packages like the free crazybump) that creates a surface of peaks and troughs. This surface can be imported into Blender and 'layed' over your brick or stone wall and will modify the geometry so that you actually get peaks and troughs that can be printed. In order to get fine enough 'texture' though you have to subdivide your surface into smaller polygons which can create tens of thousands of faces if your wall is large enough.

 

I cant explain it very well, the second half of this video might make it easier to understand...

 

 

Edited by monkeysarefun
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