Well, currently there's not a day that goes by without me reading someone talking about 3D printing, 3D printers and whatnot. Also, I've been reading of how easy SketchUp is to work with, so given my failure to make anything of Blender around almost 10 years ago... I decided to give SketchUp a try.
Note: Newer designs are at the top (for chronological reading start at the bottom of the post)
02 - Second practical motivation:
- The other thing I wanted to learn SketchUp for was to model my subsequent bots before actually build them, and not build them as I go along like I have done thus far. And so happens that a few nights ago Frits issues a request/challenge. He was asking for someone who could design a rough 3D model of the new SHR, and I given that I had that evening free and saw it as an oportunity to acquire more experience I accepted the challenge. I think I succeded both in delivering and acquiring experience. Moreover, I had a lot of fun designing the generic SHRv3.0b model.
01 - First practical motivation:
- I decided that I would want to do a mini drill press exclusively for drilling PCBs (and my hands know how much I really need one). So after perusing through several DIY designs on the internet, and sketching a rough design on paper I came to the conclusion that I could at least draw a motor holder bracket to be printed on some 3D printer, despite not having one myself.
And hence that became my first project/learning experience. It took me 4 attempts until I designed a bracket that pleased me. I took quite a while modelling the first version as I fumbled through the commands and options, it looked reasonable but I was not happy with the slantedness of the screw holes. I went on to design a second version only to realize at the end that I've mistakenly set the radius as the diameter, hence I got a bracket twice as large as I would like. Trying to fix that using the scale tool only led to disaster, so I went on to make a third version. In this version I realized that if I wanted to design some printable object, that object should be a solid, despite what it might look there were a few micro-leaks that just wouldn't go away, and worse yet... again near the end I noticed that the cylinder was off center in regard to the backplate. I went back to youtube and watched a few tutorials up to this one. And while doing so made this nifty example table below by following the tutorial steps :P
With this I’ve learned a few more tricks, took a deep breath, some consideration and careful started the fourth attempt at designing a bracket. The final picture does not show how I approached the build, but myself I thought it was pretty clever, if I may say so, and I ended up with a perfect solid model object.