Flowers

So my new idea is to create a flower on Sketchup.  I was going to start with a rose, butI couldn't get the delicate petals down, so I Googled it. Let's see how well this works.

So I tried the flower myself, using a sphere, flattened spheres, and a follow me stem. It turned out OK.  I feel like my daisy is missing a few petals.

Technology Summit

Today was surreal. I got the opportunity to speak to people about 3D printing. What an amazing opportunity for me. 45 minutes really isn't enough time to talk about printing, but I tried! People were interested in knowing more about integrating curriculum with 3D printing, so I will make curriculum a weekly topic.

3D Social Page

I was poking around Reddit and found some developers created a social page for 3D printing. A 3 D printing social network.

It is comprised of some designs from Thingiverse, some from bld3r, and some from other sites.  It makes pretty much everything I've done pale in comparison.

Follow Me

Knowing how to use the Follow Me tool has changed my life.  But more than changing my life, it changed the life of a ten year-old boy we will call "Bacon." Bacon was a fifth grade student in my 3d printing class.  I am calling him Bacon because he loves bacon. He's drawn pictures of himself with bacon and even wrote a bacon poem. Also, because I don't want some Internet crazy looking up his real name. I did one lesson on using the follow me tool to create a sphere. Make-a-Sphere-in-SketchUp. I showed the students how to do it, and boy, I never imagined what the result would be.  Bacon took that piece of information and ran with it. He started making cones, hexagonal prisms, all sorts of clever things. It was one of those incredible moments for me where I really felt like someone learned something from me.I really love the hat though.  He started with a circle, then did the follow me along the circle's edge to make a donut.  Then push/pull upward to make the top part, and push/pull down on the inside to make room for the head. Each hat took about 20 minutes to print because it was tiny.

Coils and Turnarounds

I like to study different techniques at different times. Some depending on the students, others depending on the level of difficulty.  So over the past month, I've been considering how to make coils and round-edged objects.  How did I learn?  Tutorials and trial and error.  I started with WikiHow.  It is my go-to tool for 3d printing.  If I want to learn something, I start with WikiHow. Design a Rope Coil.

Then I watched a YouTube video but I got stuck for hours on using the rotation tool.  I'll never get those hours back!  But it is an interesting viewing.

Depth Viewing

I'm a fan of early 3D movies from the 1950s as well as a fan of 3D printing, so my inspiration for this blog came from some old advertisements for 3D glasses. I will be posting weekly about new techniques about 3D printing.