October 6, 20232 yr Author Tinkercad is also nuts. Few hrs and you can do this, they have great tutorials, jump in..... [ATTACH type=full" alt="54422]54422[/ATTACH] In case you don't know, you can make and use round cylinders: Take a normal cylinder; give it 60 sides; copy and rotate 2 deg; copy and rotate 2 deg; combine; save in your created shapes. It's then available to use whenever you need a round cylinder.
October 6, 20232 yr I don't get it. How do you give sides to a round cylinder? In tinkercad one can change the shape of an object. That said having played with tinkercad , I can see Croxden's point of view and have not found it straight forward to use initially . I expect if I play with it for another or 3 months I might get the hang of it , but it wastes so much of my time. Edited October 6, 20232 yr by Nealh
October 6, 20232 yr Author I don't get it. How do you give sides to a round cylinder? It's not a real cylinder. It's made of polygons. Nearly all CAD software works like that. Circles are made of straight lines. The more lines (sides) you have, the rounder the circle. The roundness doesn't show when it's a small circle, but when you make it big, it becomes a very noticeable polygon. Look at the faces on the cylindrical part in post #24. That's the default number of sides, but there's a slider in the object properties where you can increase the faces (sides) to over 60, which would make it look a lot rounder, but by duplicating, rotating and adding two times, 60 faces becomes 180. You can make it as round as you want with that method, but if you go too far, it'll take too long to replot the image each time you make a change.
October 6, 20232 yr Author OK, I get it now. Still a lot to learn. Just do it, and you soon figure it out. Whenever you can't do something, use Google to get the answer. I never used Tinkercad before. I watched the 10 minute tutorial on how to make a spanner, then I was able to make that battery box with no further instruction. I'm now making a helical Ugrinski wind turbine. I had to use Google twice for that to see how to get smooth cicles and do the twist. There's no clever way to do the twist, so I invented my own by using step and repeat.
October 6, 20232 yr In tinkercad one can change the shape of an object. That said having played with tinkercad , I can see Croxden's point of view and have not found it straight forward to use initially . I expect if I play with it for another or 3 months I might get the hang of it , but it wastes so much of my time. I would go through the Tinkercad tutorials, the methodology and workflow to create shapes is a case of taking basic shapes as building blocks then tweaking them and grouping them together to make bigger shapes. To remove stuff you use another shape but make it a hole. I've used Photoshop for over 25yrs and I find the process not dissimilar to graphic design. The other popular tool that there is a free version of is Autodesk Fusion 360 - this is the big brother of Tinkercad and workflow is pretty different. Here you would draw a 2D shape then extrude it in the 3rd dimension to create shapes. It's a pro grade tool but the learning curve is very very steep...I didn't get on with it tbh...it's on the list for a rainy day...
October 6, 20232 yr Author I would go through the Tinkercad tutorials, the methodology and workflow to create shapes is a case of taking basic shapes as building blocks then tweaking them and grouping them together to make bigger shapes. To remove stuff you use another shape but make it a hole. I've used Photoshop for over 25yrs and I find the process not dissimilar to graphic design. The other popular tool that there is a free version of is Autodesk Fusion 360 - this is the big brother of Tinkercad and workflow is pretty different. Here you would draw a 2D shape then extrude it in the 3rd dimension to create shapes. It's a pro grade tool but the learning curve is very very steep...I didn't get on with it tbh...it's on the list for a rainy day... We used Pro Desktop at School. It's more or less the same as Fusion 360 AFAICS. It's very confusing if you don't get it. The process for every feature is: 1. Choose or define a workplane 2. Choose or define a shape 3 Process the shape (e.g. extrude) People often miss out step 1.
October 6, 20232 yr I use autodesk123 but autocad discontinued it for a number of years now. It's lightweight and very fast. You click on an object and enter its dimensions very simply. None of the new CAD stuff is as simple as it. I am playing with OnShape at the moment but find it hard to learn.
October 6, 20232 yr I use autodesk123 but autocad discontinued it for a number of years now. It's lightweight and very fast. You click on an object and enter its dimensions very simply. None of the new CAD stuff is as simple as it. I am playing with OnShape at the moment but find it hard to learn. Tinkercad (and Autodesk Fusion 360 ), allow you to click on an object and manually enter the dimensions too, Tinkercad is probably as simple as you'll get these days but you can great results with some effort.
October 6, 20232 yr Tinkercad allows metric or imperial , metric one can input 0.01mm increments . Edited October 6, 20232 yr by Nealh
October 7, 20232 yr Tinkercad allows metric or imperial , metric one can input 0.01mm increments . Yes, the 'snap' value is important, you can set it to 'off' be more granular so you can align everything, frustrating experience otherwise
October 7, 20232 yr I have found that when stacking stuff , aligning is the most hard bit and I don't even own a printer. I'm just tinkering to see if I need a printer or not.
October 7, 20232 yr Author I have found that when stacking stuff , aligning is the most hard bit and I don't even own a printer. I'm just tinkering to see if I need a printer or not. I can help you with that. The number of 3-D printers you need is N+1, where N is the number you already have. Applying that rule to your circumstances, N=0 and N+1= 1. Therefore you need one 3D printer at the moment.
October 7, 20232 yr I have found that when stacking stuff , aligning is the most hard bit and I don't even own a printer. I'm just tinkering to see if I need a printer or not. Tinkercad has an 'align' button, when you learn how to use it life becomes a little simpler.. ;-)
October 7, 20232 yr I can help you with that. The number of 3-D printers you need is N+1, where N is the number you already have. Applying that rule to your circumstances, N=0 and N+1= 1. Therefore you need one 3D printer at the moment. I would have never guessed that d8veh.
October 7, 20232 yr I can help you with that. The number of 3-D printers you need is N+1, where N is the number you already have. Applying that rule to your circumstances, N=0 and N+1= 1. Therefore you need one 3D printer at the moment. I disagree. The only way to reliably print faster, let's say twice as fast.....is to have 2 printers.... At a bare minimum I'd go with: N+2
October 7, 20232 yr Author I disagree. The only way to reliably print faster, let's say twice as fast.....is to have 2 printers.... At a bare minimum I'd go with: N+2 No, you're agreeing with me. It's your maths that's off. What you need is always N+1.
October 7, 20232 yr Author "And if buy two at same time.....?" You're a rich bar sterward and I hate you because I'm jealous.
October 8, 20232 yr 3D printing is a great way to get the youngsters in to stuff that's not just screen time. My son took an interest when I got the printer and we printed some cool stiff like Star Wars, Dr Who stuff and all the slot car stuff etc. He wanted to do a school science project with his pal and we found this crane on thinigverse. I printed it out and he took it to his pals who's dad knows about Arduinos and final result was this. No video unfortunately. The crane picks up a small ball and places it on top of a spiral drop, balls runs down the spiral track under gravity to end, crane picks up ball and drops it at top again... Not rocket science but so much going on, 3D design, slicing, printing, mechanical build with real life bolts, electrical wiring the servo motors/Arduino, making sure everything has a common ground, getting the sketch to run, editing the sketch to make it faster etc. Some schools are teaching this now, give me a better way of getting kids in to realising not everything in life is a click away. Edited October 8, 20232 yr by portals
October 8, 20232 yr I play with Arduinos too, this is a 3D printed photogrammetry turntable I made powered by Arduino with a external 9V power supply as the servo and stepper motors need way more power than an Arduino could ever supply (buck converter). It has three modes controlled by joystick. Mode 1 it rotates at a steady definable speed to take video 360s of products or whatever you want. Mode 2 you control the turntable using the joystick left or right. Mode 3 it moves a predefined distance once a sec. I've used this to take pics of slot cars, take enough and you can render a 3D object from 2D pics in Blender. It's a lot of effort with somewhat mixed results but with some editing you get a file good enough to print in a resin printer (not FDM). Edited October 8, 20232 yr by portals
October 8, 20232 yr Apart from the Arduino Uno, the buck converter and BT gamepad I had rest of this in a Sunfounder kit I bought years ago. You can see the gamepad in top left in it's 3D printed housing to be screwed down inside the turntable, what happens is the servo activates and moves the flipper that hits a specific button on gamepad that is bluetooth connected to phone and configured to take one pic per button click on phone. Video whilst testing here: Pot is for LCD 2*32 display brightness
October 8, 20232 yr Pics of my Honda Type-R rendered from pics in Mesh Room, hit and miss but enough to tart up if you have the skills (I don't) then resin print.
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