I’ve made a large number of custom prints, and all of them were created using TinkerCad. It’s an amazing toolkit, stupid easy to use but versatile. That is … until something needs a tiny adjustment somewhere. That’s when I feel it would’ve been neat to use parametric CAD instead.
I have spent many hours following Youtube tutorials for Onshape, Fusion, and FreeCAD. Tutorial shapes like a LEGO brick are fairly easy, although I admit that this kind of modeling is a sharp departure from the kid-friendly TinkerCad.
My problem is that I don’t want to make simple coasters or keychains, but complex shapes like this one. It’s a holder/mount for two different kinds of walkie-talkies that I use, and the blue part slides into a tray in my car’s dash where it sits nice and snug.
Question: How the hell do I even get started modeling something like this?? There’s not a single straight cuboid here. Everything is slightly wedge-shaped.
The way I do this in TinkerCad is that I build the hollow first: I made a 3d model of the walkie, a little oversized, set it be hollow, and drop it into the shape - that’s the red or orange shells you see.
I use blender for all my 3D printing stuff. It might not be the most beginner friendly but its a great tool to know and use once you have some experience with it.
I once used it to design a 3D printed lamp thing and then also used blender to simulate the lighting effect of light passing through thin white filament.
But yeah if you need to edit down to the polygons, then its great.
Same. My most ambitious project was to create a new arm rest for a Traveler Guitar. The one it comes with is super uncomfortable to me, so I redesigned it to be shaped more like a Squier. Images here .
Cool stuff. The paintjob or coating you used makes it look really professional.
Thank you! Though, there’s no paint or coating. Printed using standard Black PLA on a Bambu X1C. The finish is just the natural texture of the print.
Oh lol i thought u turned the white print into a black end product somehow. Silly me.