Research and Inspiration
This week I focused on expanding my 3D modeling skills and felt it was necessary to explore some of the sites we discussed in class as well as some other avenues for inspiration. Most of my immediate research was gathered from Thingiverse.com and YouMagine.com by browsing art and sculpture collections for 3D models. There were several models on Thingiverse that have this cellular-like structure. I did some research online and found out that the technical term is a Voronoi Pattern.
I have to admit that I’m partially addicted to Reddit but I have found that the Functional Print subreddit provides tons of ideas and inspiration for creating useful objects with a 3D printer. With the project I’m working on in Grad Critique my need for SD cards has skyrocketed and I felt the need to print something that could help me organize both microSD and normal SD cards. There were several models on Thingiverse that accomplished this but I wanted to use my new skills (basic as they are) to incorporate some additional functionality to this case. What that would be took a while to reveal itself. I thought more about what other things I need to grow my process at EDP and I instantly thought documentation!
Process and Progress
Monday was really a day for me to get to work and begin to adapt models that I downloaded online. I wanted to do something artistic and something that was functional. I began working on the sculptural piece and wanted to emulate that Voronoi pattern I’ve become so obsessed with. After discovering these types of models I had to figure out how to do it for myself. After a little research I found some tutorials on how to accomplish this look with a model in MeshMixer. and I was able to create a Voronoi Owl that I’m very happy with. Initially I tried to keep the branch the owl was perched on as solid but it was not working the way I wanted and the boolean operations were still crashing the modeling applications. In the end I decided to just apply the Voronoi pattern to the whole model.
Once I figured out that the functionality I wanted to add to my second model had to help my documentation process I knew that a camera mount of some kind would be the way to go.
Reflection
StructureSynth creating a very unique issue with my computer and would not allow me to connect to an external display. It was rather frustrating because my computer would recognize the display but would not output any information or audio. This turned into a 2 hour conversation with Apple Tech Support before we were finally able to determine that the issue was due to StructureSynth.
Aside from that issue I felt that my 3D modeling went rather well. I did have some stability issues with MeshMixer again and attempted the same processes with TinkerCAD with no problem. I believe these small hiccups are helping me to understand what is and is not possible to do with Boolean operations. I think that it is quickly becoming the time when I need to work on improving my personal modeling skills to gain the ability to create these structures from scratch and not by adapting the model of another individual.