This is my first more or less serious tinkering with Sverchok, the
parametric add-on for Blender. So to use this, you need to install
Blender and the add-on.
Parametric means you can play with values to change the shape. You
can do this in three ways (try it with the nodes on the left):
- click on the arrows to the left and right.
- click in the field to enter a value.
- slide over the field. This is best for a first try, to get a feel
of what it does.
The main value to play with is to the left: 'width to height'. This
influences the shape. A higher setting looks better to my taste. Put
this on a ring and you can give it to your fiancée. :)
To the left is also the size, but you can also alter that
after you baked the shape. At a setting of 1 it is about 1.7 mm wide.
A more interesting value is to the right, the number of iterations.
But be careful, a value higher than 3 (or even 2) may take a long
time to calculate. Also, ik makes
little sense if you don't print it very big. Even with just 2
iterations, it doesn't make sense to make the model smaller than about 3
cm (which roughly corresponds to a size-value of 18). Else, the top
iterations will be too tiny. With 3 iterations it should fill the print
bed of an Ultimaker.
Lastly, there is 'Segments' in the Bevel-node in the bottom centre.
This makes for rounder shapes. And with a value higher than 1, you
may also experiment with the Profile-setting (default is 0.5, for a
simple round shape). These effects were not my intention, but if it
pleases you, who am I to argue. :) Actuallly, 4 segments with a low
Profile-number looks quite interesting (although it may be difficult to print). One of the surprises that
parametric modelling can lead to.
Other settings are not meant to be played with, which is why I put
them in collapsed nodes. That is, I can't guarantee it will be
printable. (If, however, you just want to just look at the shape on
the screen, that is a different matter. In that case knock yourself
out; click on a node's triangle to expand it.)
The main issue with printability is overhang. The angle of the basic
shape should not be a problem on a well tuned Ultimaker. But the
iterations should not move outside the top of the previous layer, where
they would be unsupported. This is determined by three nodes: the
division (by 1.88) at the top left, the
float (set to 0.25) in the centre and the formula at the bottom
left. This is 1/x**2+2, which makes sure that the value coming out
of the node is always between 0 and 2. (Doing it this way also
ensures that there will always be an effect; you don't have to
search for the values that 'work'.)
When you're satisfied with the result:
- click 'bake' in the viewer on the right
- in the 3D view click the model to select it
- with the pointer still hovering there hit hotkey S to scale, enter a
value and hit 'Enter'. The dimensions can be seen on the right, in mm.
If not satisfied you can alter the scale-value on the left.
- export the file as an stl (file > export > stl). Make sure the
model is still selected because only selected parts will be written to
the file.
You can now open it in a slicer to prepare it for print.