Millennium Falcon parts for 3d Printing

Well I cut the crap out of my finger this week and regular scratch building is out of the question. So I followed through on the interest I had already developed and figured that I would delve into this 3D software and see what happened.

I spent this morning learning a little about 123D Design, midday scrounging through reference photos trying to figure some measurements and drawing a few plans and all afternoon and evening fumbling around doing trial and error type stuff until I came up with this:
View attachment 542218View attachment 542225
It's the start of a McLaren wheel hub for the Falcon engine deck. It's a little wonky - didn't quite get the curvature right. But it's a start.

And yeah, I've got questions now. Is 123D Design really decent software or should I be looking for something else? Preferably free. The main problem I had was being able to measure specific areas of the individual parts once grouped. Or any part for that matter. Am I missing something in 123D or does it just not do that kind of stuff? If someone can recommend better freeware that would be awesome. I just went with what Shapeways said would be a good start. I haven't figured out how I'm going to do the spokes. There are a lot of concave cuts that's going to take a little more know-how than I picked up in every instructional video I could find. And I'm really not sure how I'm going to get the spokes into the hub. Trying to mesh parts with parts in 123D has been cutting voids instead of meshing. Maybe I'm missing something.

If there is another thread where questions like these are more appropriate, please let me know and I'll gladly take them there. Any positive or helpful feedback appreciated.

I don't see, at the moment, how some of you guys do the insanely cool things you do without smashing your keyboard with your face, but I hoping this will get easier with a little work. I can certainly see being able to do things that I just can't do with stock styrene, a hobby knife, files and superglue. This could turn into an invaluable skill set for some parts. But I'm not sure I'm using software that's going to get me where I really want to go. If I really want to go there. The frustration to fun cost benefit analysis didn't weigh out very well today. But when I first started scratching very small parts in styrene, I sorta felt the same way. I'll get there. But I'm sure hoping to be able to find a resource to ask some specific questions. I'll play around with the spokes some more tonight and tomorrow. We'll see how it goes. Hopefully I won't end up with a concussion.:wacko

I've been using TrueSpace for all my 3D modeling since the 80's. It's easy to use, and free to download... just has a bit of a problem with exporting to printable formats... but nothing that Accutrans can't fix.
 
SGluedMyFingers & LrdSatyr8 You could try Onshape for 3D modelling. It's free, sketch/feature based, easy to use and cloud based so it can run on a web browser and any mobile device!
maruska - awesome job on modelling the parts. I know how much work goes into it as I have been doing the same thing myself for another (non SW vehicle).
Very genrous of you to share all your work too - Kudos.
 
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@SGluedMyFingers & @LrdSatyr8 You could try Onshape for 3D modelling. It's free, sketch/feature based, easy to use and cloud based so it can run on a web browser and any mobile device!
@maruska - awesome job on modelling the parts. I know how much work goes into it as I have been doing the same thing myself for another (non SW vehicle).
Very genrous of you to share all your work too - Kudos.

Haven't played with OnShape much. It and Fusion came on around the same time, and I started with Fusion. But I should give OnShape a try too!
 
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Whilst I love Google sketch up it really is not a tool for 3-D printing. It is great for making models and I have used a lot for rendering of making high-quality maps and backgrounds.

Sketchup had some serious limitations but it comes to midelling curves and any kind of flowing/organic object, plus it's also got serious problems if you're trying to produce objects that can be used for 3-D printers, I have done so as it happens but you need more than just Google sketch up, you're probably going to need three of four programs.

Sketchup doesn't have tools that make it easy to produce, for example, hollow shells (important when saving printing costs), it also only exports to two formats. Neither of which are generally supported and the more generic one produces a mesh that needs a lot of fixingwith regards to faces edges on the overall design. This will then require another fix after conversion to a printable format.
 
There are a plugins that will work with the free Sketchup (as far as I know) that fix common errors in the output for 3D printing, common things are reversed faces, such as if you mirror image a copied component it creates reversed faces so you have to make it unique before exporting to STL.

But yes creating a thin wall skin version is not the easiest thing...
 
Sketchup may be limited but it's always worked fine for my needs and limited talents. No problem defining hollow shells in the slicer and the free stl plugin works fine.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Not saying I have the skills to even do this, but if I wanted to take a crack at building the maintenance wells for 3D printing, what would be a good piece of software for a beginner to start with?
 
I would say Sketchup purely because if you go on youtube there are hundreds of videos of people building things that can give you a good idea of how to start. Also if you want any pointers I can list the additional extra free plugin tools that make things considerably easier and quicker.
Screen shot of my setup, all the tool icons across the top row are free plugins bar one which was $10 I think. Standard toolbar on the left.
Sketchup.jpg
BTW that is the accurate ML 5 foot digital model the guys have done on here imported into Sketchup.

This is what you can get after a few hundred hours work!
Firefox Render 7.jpg
 
Just thought you guys might wanna know a little more info about good programs to use for 3D creating and modeling. Personally I use Truespace... it's completely Free and has alot of powerful tools. Recently SW just started allowing .STL (Sterolithography) files for uploading objects... but it does alot more... DXF, 3DS, DirectX. Most of which can be exported out to. Then there are a few online free converters that can be used as well... one I use is here: http://www.greentoken.de/onlineconv/ ... it will allow you to upload to a variety of formats and it will convert to a variety of formats compatible with printing. Here's a screen shot of TS in action while I've been working on a new figure (it's almost ready):

scnshot.jpg

Now... every 3D program has it's good and bad points. Truespace is no exception to that. The reason why I use it is because it's extremely easy to understand and model in. I can crank out a full model rather quickly in it but I've been using it since version 2.0 back in the 90's. They were bought by Microsoft to compete with Google Sketchup but dropped. However, it would released as a free download and is currently at 7.61beta and has been stuck there for awhile now. It has a pretty large userbase and a great onlien community to help out. The community forum and the direct download for this program is here: http://www.united3dartists.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4328

Like I said it's a totally free program, there are a ton of extra plugins that make life alot easier too. Alot of these programs liek Blender, 3D Studio, and Maya I have personally found seriously difficult to understand. Sure there are alot of video tutorials but not many that are easy to follow and learn from. TS has a very intuitive interface and I've personally found it exceptional in creating new models. In any event, if you're trying to figure stuff out and wanting to get into 3D modeling and printing, I recommend it highly!
 
Never heard of Truespace - downloading it now though.

Blender is complicated, the interface covers everything even though you might only need 10% of it so it looks mind bogglingly complex. Does have some useful plug ins for importing game character models though.
 
Would be interested in seeing your workflow and plugins. When I was doing it I was having to do 4 or 5 step conversions to get a clean model.
 
Well first off... here's my workflow in TS to create a model for printing:

1) Set my World Units to Millimeter
2) Create my Model
3) If multiobject, use PoyCombine plugin to make a single object
4) Save Object as STL
5) Upload STL to SW and choose MM import

Viola... Printable piece

Sometimes however, I have also done the following:

4) Save Object as DXF
5) Convert DXF to OBJ file using online converter
6) Upload OBJ to SW and use MM import

One thing I'm still trying to get a good workflow on is holes... If you've got a hole or a recess in your model, SW will automatically fill it. I've fixed it a few times but don't have an actual method yet.
 
Sketchup does have some idiosyncrasies that can cause output glitches for 3D printing. I use Netfabb basic to check the exported STL, it shows you where the problems are, unless they are internal extra surfaces (counts as "shells") so you can't obviously see them, so you have to x-ray view the model and/or hide some external surfaces and go looking for them. If it's just a small issue I let Netfabb fix it, but usually go back and fix it Sketchup.

I will go through my plugins list and some other helpful stuff later when I have more time.

Jon
 
I'm a Blender user. It's worth the learning curve – it's not too difficult but you need to memorise a LOT of hot keys, and really you need to have a numeric keypad and a three button mouse to get started, so not something you can really use on a laptop. I'll be using it to do some 3D printed parts soon, I think. I've got a few things in mind...
 
Bit later than I thought but had a busy weekend!

This might be in a bit of a random order just writing things as I think of them.

Sketchup without the add-on tools is best at boxy non organic forms, why something like 80% of architects use it now apparently. It's still not as flexible for organic shapes like Blender, Rhino3d etc. but for engineering/spacecraft stuff I think it works very well.

A few things I learnt the hard way and can drive you mad early on. When you start a model go to Window > Model Info > Units and set the precision and whether you want to enable length snapping. Precision is logical if you are building something small you probably want 0.000mm (or similar in inches) and length snapping can be useful until you get to really small moves and it won't let you if it's on or it jumps.
Also in the model info page under components you can adjust the visibility of similar (cloned) components and the rest of the model when editing.

Also under Window > Styles then the Edit tab you can set the front and back (inside) colour of the faces, it defaults to white and pale grey, which can be hard to distinguish so change one to something more obvious, I usually go for red as the back colour so it stands out.

Under Window > Preferences > General you can choose if and how often it creates an auto-save file, handy but can cause it to crash when you are in the exact moment of moving a large piece of geometry, usually you are ok just restarting and it prompts the auto-save is newer, but it can generate the same mid move which can be annoying, so you have to go back to the previous manual save. So as a simple rule save often under revision files names 01, 02, 03 etc so you can always go back if you or it screws up!

While we are talking components a quick and easy explanation. If you just want a part(s) not to interact with other geometry and move as one select them > right click and choose make group. This way they can cross other parts without merging or making new geometry you don't want. By default Sketchup wants things to be joined together.
Making a component takes it a stage further as you can make a "master" named component then clone it. The copies will then all change when you change the master, you can stop this behaviour by right clicking the copy and choosing make unique. Found this really handy when building tailfins of the Firefox as you can keep the master level to edit the profile while the "clones" can be rotated to the correct angle.

Note about groups and components, you can apply a colour to the selected group or component as sort of a master override independent of individual faces, but it has driven me mad in the past trying to get rid of it so try and go into a group or component (double-click on it) then select and color inside. If you want to colour sections use layers and the color by layer override in the Layers window.

There is also an option to colour edges by X, Y, Z direction which I can't find by at the moment, but I know it's there!

Selecting parts is something I learnt quite late on and was a godsend when I did. If you create a selection box by clicking and moving the mouse right and down (so starting the box with the top left corner) it selects only parts that fall completely in that box.
If you start a selection box by clicking and moving the mouse left and up (so starting the box with the bottom right corner) it selects everything that touches that box.
These can be combined with holding down shift while selecting will do an addition or subtraction selection based on what you have already selected, selecting arrow shows a + and - symbol. Holding down Control forces adding selections and Shift + Control forces de-selection, again the pointer arrow shows a - or + symbol respectively.

When moving, and this one drove me mad because I misunderstood it, you only have to tap the left, right or up arrow keys to lock the movement in the X,Y or Z direction, don't hold it down like I did at first and couldn't understand why it behaved like it was possessed!

Circles and arc are created with 24 and 12 segments by default, so if you are creating one where the resolution might be visible when printed increase it right clicking to get Entity info or just have the windows visible all the time by selecting it from the Window menu.

A point about this is if you extrude a circle it auto-softens the segment lines so it looks smooth, if you want to see more what your printed model will look like you need to unsoften the edges, most direct way is from the Soften Edges window, select edges, untick Smooth normals and then lower the angle between normals slider. To you wan the fully smoothed look so all hidden geometry edges disappear even on flat segmented surfaces you have to tick Soften Coplanar.

Before I forget stay with version 2015 as these is a 2016 version but there's no guarantee the plug-ins will work properly with it unless the author has updated them, it does appear most of them are up to date.

Plug ins - First sign up with http://sketchucation.com and get the sketchucation extension that lets you search and auto install plug ins within Sketchup, makes it hassle free, although occasionally the search doesn't seem to work the same as on the website, mostly just a name matching glitch I think.

Very useful plug-ins are:

There are a whole bunch of plugins done by someone called Fredo which are brilliant

Fredo6: LibFredo6 - Shared library needed by many of the Fredo plugins. It is NOT a standalone plugin - get this first, all the Fredo tools look like they are 2016 compatible.

Fredo6: Curvizard - A suite of interactive tools operating on sequences of edges (Contours) and Sketchup curves. Lets you weld edges together, handy if you accidentally cut a section as this can make it such the push/pull and offset tools won't work the way you expect.

Fredo6: Curviloft - Dedicated to Loft and Skinning, that is, generation of surfaces from contours.
I build about 60% of models with this, the loft function is perfect for wingsections or transition from say a circle to a square etc. The skinning function will "skin" geometry. Both of these have a couple of glitches
1. If you have overlapping geometry such as a part that on it's own and part of a group existing in the same space it can get unhappy. I kept getting a "pinhole errors found" which wouldn't let the tool complete. Sometimes just saving, quitting and reloading fixed it, other time I have copied the pieces (use move plus a tap on the Control key) a fixed amount in say X direction then move the loft section back and delete the copied pieces.
2. It can see what it thinks are breaks in edges which it flags with a small purple square, and won't complete, so again doing the copy and move to create is often the easy solution or by using Curvizard > Make curves (weld) tools to make seperate geometry lines a whole.
Also discovered recently you can control how it makes the loft by grouping portions together in equal number of segments.

Good video here from about half way through https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxqn145Q274

Fredo6: FredoScale -Interactively apply a number of geometric transformations, such as Scaling, Tapering, Stretching, Plane Shear, Twisting, Bending and Rotation. Adds the missing functionality from the standard scale tool, kind of stupid Sketchup didn't include this really.

Fredo6: Joint Push Pull Interactive - New version of JointPushPull, more interactive and with introduction of 3 new tools: Extrude, Round and Follow. Expands the functionallity of the push/pull tool so you can select multiple faces control the direction etc.

Fredo6: RoundCorner - Performs the rounding of the edges and corners of 3D shapes along a 2D profile, in 3 modes: Round corners, Sharp corners and Bevel.

Fredo6: Tools On Surface - A suite of Tools for drawing on curved surfaces, with lines, various shapes, offset and Freehand / Polyline. It provides an inference mechanism, a Contour Editor and a dedicated Eraser.

TIG: Mirror - Mirror selected objects by picking 1/2/3 points to define a point/line/plane: then choose to Keep/Delete the original objects.

s4u-Make face - closes holes essentially, although can create internal faces if the geometry lines up. Useful when slicing complex models for STL export as it will fix possible geometry holes. Also can fix incomplete OBJ files when they are imported, sometimes they have the geometry lines but not completed triangles so the geometry disappears when you try and export it.

Whaat: Artisan [Trial] - Organic Toolset for powerful subdivision, sculpting, and soft selection tools. This Next-Gen extension for SketchUp is a free 15 day trial. This one you have to pay for but can be very useful, there are videos on youtube showing what it can do.

These appear under the Extensions menu not as a toolbar

thomthom: TT Library - A library of reusable code, which is used to organize and manage many of TT's plugins, below

TIG: Import OBJ with Materials - Imports OBJ files with Materials, choice of Units, YZ axis flip etc...

TIG: Triangulate Faces - Triangulates face, and all Texture UVs are kept.

Anton Synytsia: FixIt_101 - Attempts to turn groups into solids. The primary purpose was to automatically finish holes, but it looks like its quite successful in attempting to solidify the object too. Careful with this one, it does correct models well for STL output, but can get confused with nested groups and loft/skinning objects and just delete them!

thomthom: CleanUp - Optimize and clean up a model. Brilliant at removing unwanted geometry and duplicate faces, I set the options in Clean the I have it set to a shortcut key for easy access.

Draw menu tool

John McClenahan: SU Draw Parametric Shapes - This plugin enables Sketchup users to draw and place as component and edit, common 3D geometric shapes by specifying in a dialogue box their size and (where relevant) the number of segments to use when drawing shapes based on circles, polygons, or helix. Basically a shapes create like 3Dmaxs and Blender.

Will add to this as things come to mind

Jon
 
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Been busy over the past week getting back into cockpit modeling. I'm trying to stay accurate to the ANH version - although this certainly remains more of an idealized interpretation which pulls proportions from ESB but the layout of ANH. Confused? I've personally never liked the crooked, smashed cockpit of ANH. It's like the ANH cockpit had it not been hacked-up before filming...

Screen Shot 2016-02-29 at 9.48.34 PM.png

Screen Shot 2016-02-29 at 10.12.09 PM.png

J.
 
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I'm kind of a fan of the chopped up cockpit, but replicating it is tough. It really looks more I'm the one who made a bad model, rather than the production team. Seem to remember some thread on here about replicating poorly made or jacked up props exactly, and how it kind of doesn't work sometimes. As I was referencing the cockpit, I noticed while switch between two screencaps of the same shot (escape from mos eisley) that the jacked up cockpit corner kind of floats around during the shot, I guess as the crew physically shifts the set piece for explosions.

yours is looking good!
 

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