Buildings in Blender for 3D Printing.

[DGO]

20 hours ago, JCL said:

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?

 

monkeysarefun posted an excellent reply above that pretty much covers all the basics so I won't go into it further, suffice to say that for random textures that you want on an actual 3d stl printable file displacement maps are a good choice especially for fairly small scales where fine detail would never be seen

[alangdance]

Many thanks JCL for another great video, waiting for the next one now.

Its funny that there was very lttile videos for producing 3d files for Model railways. Now there are

2 great set of videos on youtube being made by RMWeb members.

 

Alan.

[JCL]

In this video, I'm going to use arrays to create a modern brick wall. We've looked at arrays already, and this is a feature that allows us to create virtual copies of our objects, and if we change the object, all of the virtual copies change. The brick wall will use one brick, and our first array will create the first row of bricks, the second array will create the second row, and then the third array will allow us to create a wall as high as we would like.

 

Using arrays in different ways, we will be able to create a library of brick wall styles that we can use on walls of different sizes in different projects. I've already got the English bond done, so I'll put that up next, after that I'll show you how to tidy up the edges and add holes for windows and doors.

 

Finally, if you're having problems staying in Ortho view, and Blender keeps putting you in Perspective view, the first minute of the video shows you how to stop this happening.

 

 

Edited February 11, 2021 by JCL

[alangdance]

Thank you for our last video. So much quicker and easier to produce the bricks in blender than fusion. 

 

The more I watch your videos and have a play with blender the more I like it.

 

Alan

[JCL]

Hi Alan,

 

This is the document that I'm using for my different wall bonds https://www.gobrick.com/docs/default-source/read-research-documents/technicalnotes/30-bonds-and-patterns-in-brickwork.pdf?sfvrsn=0

 

 

[JCL]

The final brick walling type for now. A run through of the English garden bond. We are using the same tools that we used in the previous video, so I'm going to go through this more quickly.

 

Next video will be tidying up the edges.

 

 

[JCL]

And the next one - tidying up the end of the wall. In this video I'm assuming that the wall isn't going around a corner - it might be a garden wall for example. In the next video, I'll cover corners.

It's quite late, so finger's crossed it came out ok!

 

 

[alangdance]

Thank you again.

 

[JCL]

It's been a while since I've done this sort of thing, are you finding them 'followable'?

[alangdance]

Yes easy to follow. I like how you are doing a bit by bit. Not throwing to much info at once.

 

Alan

 

[Neil P]

Thanks, JCL. I've only watched the first video so far, but wanted to say It's excellent.  I use Tinkercad and Fusion, but have been struggling to make decent brickwork beyond flat retaining walls, so had been looking for a good intro to making model buildings in Blender.

The level of detail covered in the video is just perfect and you straight to the point. It's one of the few that I haven't ended up getting frustrated and selecting 1.5x speed to skip all the waffle. I'll be watching the rest very soon.

[JCL]

Thanks Neil. The next one will hopefully be done by the end of next week. I'm picking up a puppy tomorrow, so that and work will take a bit of time.

 

The next video(s) is/are half complete, and when finished, will show how to create a lamp shed or lineside shed. Wooden upper, with a few courses of bricks as a foundation. It'll show how to create:

• gable ends
• corners in brick and wood
• doorways and window holes

cheers

 

Jason

[monkeysarefun]

Show us the puppy!

[JCL]

Here you go! She is currently taking up a lot of my time. Mainly keeping her out of trouble  to say our lives are revolving around her at the moment is an understatement.

 

That said, today we start the shed. I’ve part 1 done, and part 2, the brick base, was recorded while she was asleep this afternoon. I’ll be able to put it up on Monday.
 

 

With our 9 year old Berner 

 

Edited February 28, 2021 by JCL

[micklner]

Beautiful ladies !!

 

[JCL]

Thanks Mick, mini- me is a girl, Amber, and the big un is a boy, Austin

[micklner]

Ooops sorry Austin , handsome dude !!

 

[JCL]

Hi Mick

 

You’re not the first, and won’t be the last. When we meet people, we tell them he’s a boy, and they still call him “she”

[JCL]

Ok, in this video, I'm creating the first three rows of bricks that will form the foundation of the shed. Of course, if you are creating a brick built shed, then you would make sure that the bricks go all the way up to the eaves. In our case, the main part of the shed will be wooden, so there will be a bit more work to do.

 

 

[Penrhos1920]

Jason,

 

Thanks for these videos.  I was about to start applying the bricks to this viaduct pier when I discovered that I've modelled full size! So this model is 823 inches long!

 

It needs to be 274mm long.  So I want to scale it by 1/3 as full size in inches can be scaled to 4mm in mm by using 1/3 factor.  But when I do it looses some of the details which have been formed by subtracting various shapes:

 

How can I select all of the shapes and scale them in one go, about a common origin?  I know I could individually scale each shape but they would then need to be put in the right place.  If a friend asked for your shed with a brick base Jason printed in 3mm how would you do that?

[JCL]

Hi there

 

You have a couple of options and a couple of things to be wary of.

 

Within Blender, if you select everything, you might think you can scale using the fields in the transform sidebar. Unfortunately, the way Blender treats selections means you can't. When you select a group of objects, one object in the selection is the active object, and all of the others are inactive objects. Any sort of transformation you do will only be done to the active object within your selection. The video shows this happening.

 

So that won't work, but there are a couple of options. The first option is the one I would use.

1. Select all
2. Press S to scale, then rescale
3. If necessary, use the scale options that pop up in the bottom left of the screen

This will rescale everything around the centre of the selected objects - which I think is what you're asking about.

 

When scaling, once in a while one of the selected objects will scale in a different way to all of this others. This is because a transform needs to be accepted - if you remember Ctrl-A will fix this)

 

Another option is to join everything together in Object mode by selecting them and pressing the J key. The only downsides here are that:

• when objects are joined, any unfinished modifiers (such as array, scale, etc) are discarded
• when you separate them again, your old object names will have disappeared, and are replaced by a single object name for all the previously joined objects with the suffix .001, .002, .003 etc

Back up to a new file name before doing anything major!

 

(No sound, the puppy is playing with squeaky toys and making a racket!)

 

If you are slicing and printing the model yourself, you can use the slicing software to rescale the model before you print it. Shapeways also offers this service.

 

Does that help?

[JCL]

Time has been very short in the last couple of weeks, but while the house has been quiet, I've managed to knock off a couple more videos. Prepare to be bombarded.

 

The first video will show you how to create the wooden upper walls using the planking method we looked at a few weeks ago.

 

 

Edited March 13, 2021 by JCL

[JCL]

The second video today (I know, nothing comes along, and then two come in at the same time) will show you how to create a basic door and window.

 

In addition to the array modifier, I've made use of the boolean modifier this week. This modifier will allow you to punch holes in the sides of your walls for windows and doors. I've shown you the quick and dirty way of doing this. There are other more elegant ways, so if I get a chance, I'll show them at a later date.

 

 

[JCL]

I'm mainlining videos today.

 

Creating the base of the roof. Not difficult, especially if you've been following along, but there are a couple of things you can do to make life a bit easier.

 

 

And finally, tiling your roof.

 

 

Finally, a very small addendum. If you remember, I said that the mortar was too deep on the right hand side. In the video below, I show you how to fixt this. Apologies for the bodging, but I imagine it's useful to know how to fix small issues if they arise.

 

 

The last video that I still have to do will be exporting and then repairing the building to an STL file that you can then import into a slicer and print or send to Shapeways.

Edited March 13, 2021 by JCL

[alangdance]

Thank you.This has been an excellent series.

Hopeyou do some more video soon.

 

Alan