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A beginner starting in 3D printing with Blender - update May 18th - layers


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  • RMweb Gold

Hi Mike

 

You're absolutely right, and they are good alternative methods. It depends on how you like to work I think. I do use the lasso tool and circle select a lot (B - border select and C on the keyboard), but for larger sub-assemblies I find that layers help me more. It's probably from using Photoshop over the years.

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  • 3 months later...

Hi Jason

Can I go back to the start of this thread? I'm trying to create a column and following your chimney instructions. For the life of me, I can't find the mesh tools, let alone the spin and add tools. I've created a profile for a column in Inkscape, imported that into Blender, rotated it so that it is aligned on the z-axis (I think). But at that point, I have hit a road block. Grateful for any assistance on this. And for extra fun, I can't upload the file.

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  • RMweb Gold

Hi Simon, can you upload the profile at all? Or send it via a personal message? I'll have a look and put up some instructions. As I've changes what I do slightly since writing this and it would be good to update the thread.

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  • 2 months later...

Hi Jason and others,

 

I've just got my big toenail into Blender, but I thought, even with that minimal knowledge, a couple of observations may be useful.

 

In File|User Preferences you can select the left mouse to click with, rather than the non-standard right.

 

Blender is designed to be used with one hand on the mouse the other working the keyboard, so the keyboard short-cuts are a bit more fundamental to easy use of Blender than is the case with other programs.

 

You can delete the camera and light if you're not heading towards animation which de-clutters the screen.  You could even delete the initial cube and save as your startup file to get a blank slate each time.

 

Work in large increments (few vertices) in the objects until you're closer to finishing and then smooth them with a modifier.

 

Save and rename frequently.

 

Ctl-Z is undo.

 

Print a list of keyboard shortcuts.  I edited one from the web so I created my own list as I learned/used them, the newest at the top, keeping the full list at the bottom of the document.

 

The annoying thing is continually finding better ways of doing things but still having dead-ends stuck in my head.

 

 

 

I've hardly used the toolbar so clicking t will hide it.

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  • 1 year later...

First of all allow me to congratulate the contributors for the excellent tutorials and information provided. As in the Silhouette cutter thread, they are super helpful.

 

Reading through this and working with blender in the last few weeks, i came up with a couple of questions:

 

1. Based on post #114. If you create a door/window/wall, and you punch holes in it, you got these extra diagonals forming up (as displayed in post 114). Similar diagonals do appear if you extrude a 2d shape with islands/holes etc (ie extrude the window frame, or make it a mesh and solidify it). My question is, if these extra diagonals etc... create any problems in the stl file exported for 3d printing or if the printer sees only faces and edges and disregards the diagonals. I tried removing those diagonals and it made the object non-solid again.

 

2. My second question is, if i create a 3d object on top of a 2d svg imported design (like tracing it). Is there any way to snap the "loop cut/slide" lines onto specific lines of the underlying 2d svg design? I hope i am making sense with this (trying to do what post 114 says but with snapping).

 

Many thanks in advance for your time and replies, and congratulations once more for the cracking job at these tutorials.

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  • RMweb Gold

I've not been on Blender for a while, and I don't have it available on this computer, so hopefully if I can give you a general answer it can help you on your way:

  1. Those diagonal edges can become annoying and can indeed cause problems as you have no control over where they are added. In the end I made sure that I placed the edges where I wanted them rather than have Blender do it. Say you have a cube that is resized into a wall and you want to punch a hole in it for a window. What I ended up doing was to:
    1. use the loop and cut command or subdivide command to create a loop of edges halfway up the wall.
    2. I then select that loop of edges and move it so that it is level with the window.
    3. Finally I cut out the window - you now have some nice horizontal edges holding it in place.
  2. Unfortunately I've found that when it comes to loop/cut and slide, the best thing to use it on is a rectangle/box as the loop slides in proportion to the length of the edge that it is sliding up and down. I seem to remember it doesn't work properly if you are attempting to move it up and down curved surfaces. Not quite as easy, but a different option is to click on the two nodes that you want to link up and then create an edge (line) between them. This is a bit hit and miss though as Blender doesn't always understand that you are attempting to make a plane.

Does that help at all?

 

cheers

 

Jason

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Many thanks Jason (very helpful).

 

I did follow what was mentioned in post #114 and what you described with the loop/cut. It does end up with a very tidy looking result in wire-view.

 

In solid view all these diagonals are not visible on the faces of the objects whereas they are visible on the wire-view.

 

Furthermore, these diagonals cannot be seen either in the slicer program when i preview the layers (including the in-fills) on the exported stl file.

 

I do get the same diagonals when i convert an extruded 2d design and then convert it from curve to mesh.

 

It seems that (if the stl file is good to go), the only practical problem that these diagonals cause is that i cannot bevel properly some edges on the resulting shapes (since these diagonals get in the way). And if i keep the extruded design in "curve format" i cannot have edges to edit...

 

Following up to my 2nd question, is there a way to snap the edge of a 3d cube to a specific edge of a 2d rectangle? (trying to apply the cut/loop method accurately over an existing 2d design imported from svg)

 

Many thanks again Jason for the very helpful reply once more.

Yannis

Edited by Y_Rail
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  • RMweb Gold

No problem. I've found one other issue with the random diagonals and that is they can sometimes get in the way when editing the sides of the shape.

 

I'm afraid I don't know about the second question - I'm afraid it's been quite a long time.

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