Teaching myself how to Model for Peachy Printer

[BCLaraby]

Hey all,

A comment on The Peachy Printer site brought me here and I'm really looking forward to getting this in my hands to play. Just wondering if you had any advice for those of us looking to learn to 3D model? My end goal is to design toys for my son then print them off for him to play with. I've got a ton of drawings, but learning how to take them into 3D is the trick.

Any advice would be much appreciated!

Thank you!

[3Dmonkey]

I have used Blender for about 7 years all I can say it is possible to learn and there is a bit of a learning curve but believe me it is worth it.

But as far as I know there is no easy shortcut to making complex models for toys even with the simpler programs like google Sketchup


Blender is free to use here is the link
http://www.blender.org/download/get-blender/

There is also Google Sketchup
http://www.sketchup.com/products/sketchup-make

[Spelljammer]

I agree with 3Dmonkey. I would like to add a link in the list for Tinkercad. I have used Wings3D, Blender, Sketchup, Milkshape, 3D Studio Max, etc. For quick and easy, or just importing and modifying an STL file, Tinkercad is by far the easiest program I've ever seen.

https://tinkercad.com/

[Slatye]

You're not a student or academic, are you? The big CAD companies generally make a free (or at least reasonably affordable) student version of their high-end software (SolidWorks, Inventor, Creo Parametric, Solid Edge) available for students. I currently use SolidWorks, although I'm looking for alternatives as there are some quirks in SolidWorks that make it a bit painful to use sometimes.

[nka]

I just tried for 5 minutes TinkerCAD. It's very cool for creating simple object (easy to print). Hope we will be able to use that or export to Blender.

Blender is cool, but Tinker is lighter and easier.

[Compro01]

You might look at this stackexchange question for some pointers to introductory resources.

[Anuvin]

That stackexchange post is great. Be sure to give it a read if you are going to learn Blender. Blender is way cool, but it has a very steep learning curve. Probably the best to learn, along with Tinker.

I really love Autocad's Inventor. I took a class for it in high school and fell in love. I got a student copy from the teacher and dove in. If you are looking to make engineered parts, there is no better program, in my opinion. I found it to be intuitive and not too complicated. Very expensive, however.

[rylangrayston]

Well Im rather bias becuse Im aleady a blender head, so to me this seems simple.

1.open blender
2 hit the n key for the tool menu, scrol down and add one of your toy drawings
2. hit tab for edit mode and hit num pad key 1 for front view and 5 for to togle othagraphic view.
3 right click to select vetecis and x to deleet them do this untill you have one left
4 with the one vertex selected hit e and left click over and over moving you mouse and tracing the image of your toy
5 holding shift right click on the last to verices of your outline
6 hit a for all and f for face
7 hit the e key, move your mouse and click for extrude
8. Hit the print button soon to come with in the up coming blender add on

Its not hard to learn if you have a good teacher ... I actually volunteer teach grade 6 7 and 8 blender, they love it and even show up an hour before school starts to learn it!

I have a 7 year old son and I tought him how to do all this starting with a pice of paper and a marker, he did all the tracing in blender. ... he made a tinny little plastic throwing star for his lego nigaga guys!
He had a blast an was amazed that he really made it him self!!! I think that was the day he started thinking the peachy printer was actualy cool lol.
You shuld have see the look on his face as he watched me pull what he drew and traced in blender out of the printer! Priceless. Of course evan tho it didnt need any furter cureing he had to try out my uv currer too! IMG_2432.jpg

IMG_2431.jpgIMG_2429.jpg

Doing this with my Son was great quality time! So I aplod you for this post
BCLaraby !!

Rylan Grayston