So It All Ends In (the) Flames... of Burning Paper Models...

Well... I certainly hope that this blog post isn't too late.... but whatever at this point...

Anyways... back to paper models. First paper model, not so bad... second paper model... nope.
The lovely chalice from last week(ish) decided to join its brother the pierced cup and morph into a lantern...

 

I decided to see how large I could (reasonably) make an object (in one night) by only printing on letter sized paper, so I broke down the components of each... component even further and opting to glue the sided to the base rather than having them already attached and folding them.



Also, building off of the original, which had been two separate cups, I decided to make interchangeable pierced 'screens' for the lantern, each with slightly different patterns.

 

 (The easy way vs. the harder way)

(...at least the cut outs came out nice...)

Crappy picture, but tah-dah, paper lantern!

It turned out... pretty terrible, I'm not going to lie. I don't know if I accidentally grabbed a flimsier paper between this project and the last, or just the sheer size difference made it a lot flimsier than before, but either way, its pretty bad. The lantern's pretty lopsided as well, but oh well.

The render, on the other hand, came out quite nicely in my opinion...

 I did a pretty dumb thing and unfolded the model, then drew out the cut out designs, without thinking how I would put that all together for the final model, but I managed... in the end...

 

I simply moved the design to the base of the 'cup/screen', adjusted the scale, and used the Rotate3D tool to align it with the side of the screen. A quick extrusion and Boolean difference effectively 'pierced' the sides of the screen.

 

(Setting up the sides for 'piercing' got rather pretty, in my opinion...)

Anyways, final render:

 

Since I decided to work on the final render after making the paper model, I added a bit more of the pierced designs to the top of the piece; it just seems to work better...

(Final lantern with all the screen designs)

Since I decided to work on the final render after making the paper model, I added a bit more of the pierced designs to the top of the piece; it just seems to work better...

This was a fair bit of fun to make and I'm quite happy with the results!

Overall, this was an extremely fun and interesting class. and I feel that I learned a fair amount about 3D modelling in Rhino. I certainly feel that this might have a place in my future practice and would like to pursue this further... depending on how next year goes.... yaaay.....

Thanks!

Planning Plausible Paper Prototypes: Post Part P-two

...In my everlasting brilliance, I thought it would be a great idea to come up with five Rhino models, unfold them, choose two, tab those, print them, and create their paper counterparts the night before they were due... great idea, am I right? Oh, and to add to that, forgetting your cutting mat and tools in your locker at school just adds a beautiful spice to that recipe for certain disaster...

....but disaster is always somewhat enjoyable...

Anyways, I chose two of my cup designs (or perhaps designed them to be printed.... who knows?) from the last blog post to model in card stock.

 
(Chalice design number 1, unfolded, tabbed and ready to print)

(Too many tabs...)

 

(Please excuse the crappy pictures; it was quite late at night and the desk lamp I had sucked...)

I printed them onto card stock with little trouble (I managed not to jam the printer, yay...) and started cutting... and cutting... and cutting...

An unmeasured amount of time later of seemingly unending cutting, scoring, folding, and gluing, tah-dah,a chalice(ish) shape:

 

The foot portion had to be printed on a separate sheet of paper, as it was modeled separately and didn't fit on the letter-sized paper I was printing on, and the join between the two components is not the best. It keeps falling off.... yay... hmm... perhaps slits would fix that issue.... we shall see...

For the second paper model, I chose the cut-out, simple cup shape...

 

(I had modeled a simple cup shape on Rhino, unfolded it, then added the design to one face. That was then rotated around the base shape and the tabs added.)

(Enter the brand-new, revolutionary cutting board design: the back of a poor, old notebook)

(Black: original tab length- Red: new tab length)

As I was cutting out the pattern I realized that I had forgotten to account for the width of the cut-out designs on the face of the cup when measuring out the tabs, and one they were cut and folded, they would overlap the edge of the design. A quick, eyeballed straight cut fixed that issue....

 

 (I'm liking that shadow though...)

After about half an hour of cutting, and about the same of folding and gluing, the second cup begins to take shape, held together  by the power of paperclips while the glue takes its sweet time to dry... It was fairly easy to glue the sides together though, as the hollow form had adequate room to hold the pieces together.

But tah-dah, paper cup prototypes... not bad for a last minute effort, I'm quite pleased with how they turned out (or perhaps that was the three hours of sleep talking...). I only wish they were a bit larger, though I decided to print the templates at home and my printer only takes letter/legal sized paper. I think they second cup design would look interesting as a pierced metal object, and perhaps some day in the future I will try it, we shall see... The stem connection of the chalice design needs work and a better was to connect the two pieces, and I'll try to resolve that issue...

... after some sleep, perhaps...

Planning Plausible Paper Prototypes? Pah...

Sooo.... paper.... we meet again...

I'm (certainly) a bit late on this project, but... its been a busy week, oh well...

Anyways, here are some quick concept ideas for some paper prototypes modeled using Rhino.

 (Simplified ring form, with gem silhouette)

To start off, I decided to try modeling a component of a ring project that I was doing for my JWLM 205 class, with the hope that I would use the Rhino model as a pattern for cutting the metal (which never happened, as I got too lazy to print it and eyeballed the whole thing, but oh well...)

The cylindrical portions of the ring band were unfolded using the UnrollSrf command, though how accurate they are in measurements, I'm not quite sure. They look fine so far...

The the good-old mind-brain somehow ended up slipping into cup territory, and I decided to model a handful of cup/goblet/chalice/bowl shapes (this is what happens when you work far too late at night...). I think they would be fun to try in metal (no I really don't).

 

 

(Chosen chalice: now with fancy tabs!)

(I had unfolded the cup design and 'decorated' the faces before realizing that I forgot to copy a folded model and refolding the sides to the proper angles would be a pain, so let's all pretend there is surface details on the folded cup model, shall we?)

For the last cup prototype, I decided to make a simplified form and use surface details to complicate it. I unfolded the form and made a fairly simple design, which would ideally be cut out and left open on a physical model.

To speed up the process of unfolding some of the cup/bowl shapes, I found it easier to just unfold once face, then rotate it around the base shape to form the unfolded cutting pattern. The stems on some of the goblet shapes were meant to be solid, so they were split from the bowl portion of the cup and unfolded separately, and are to be attached in the folding of the paper model (which works in theory; in practice, not so much...) 

But yes, I could see this being an extremely useful way to model hollow-formed objects and create cutting patterns for jewellery and other objects. I most certainly will be using this process in the future to cheaply prototype ideas and create the patterns for their manufacture.

Bonus shape:

(Pendant? Christmas ornament? Random object of a strange design? Your choice...)

I attempted to unroll/unfold a more organic shape with... truthfully, I'm not sure how much success...

The flattened shapes are quite inaccurate and would likely have geometrical issues if an attempt at folding a physical paper model was made... hmm.... I'll try this again... at some later date...

...In Stilo Est Perfectum...

...The pen... is finished...

After hours of mixing measures of radius with measures of diameters and forgetting the fundamentals of basic math, the reverse engineered, manually digitized model of my pen is finally done.

 

(Wire-frame and half-rendered views of all the parts of the pen)

I'm not going to lie, I had originally chosen the pen as my object to reverse engineer and digitize in Rhino because I had somewhat believed it to be a fairly simple, straightforward object to render, but oh I was wrong...

Deciding to keep true to the object and attempt to recreate even the small details (some of which were necessary, as a majority of the pen body is transparent)-- let's just say a pen is a surprisingly complex object, in its own way.

 Anyways, the process was still quite enjoyable, and the skills learned and practiced invaluable. My understanding of the processes and abilities of Rhino has grown considerably and I feel quite comfortable with many of its tools and functions.

  

(Man, was it ever fun to start putting all the separate components together and finally see the pen taking shape)

Lining everything up was fairly simple; setting Osnap to centre and matching up the ends that way. Everything seemed to fit together snugly, so forwards onto rendering...

Setting up the material layers was fairly simple, as I had already been using layer management techniques quite frequently to organize the construction lines and such during the initial build of the pen form, so it wasn't a far stretch to then assign materials to said layers.

(Quick and dirty render using the render view mode)

Then came the actual render....

I believe I rendered it at 350 or 400 DPI, because the computer I had been using would threaten to crash whenever I attempted rendering it at 600 DPI.

Even so, my goodness, did rendering this little beastie take forever...

I had some trouble getting the material properties for a few of the translucent pieces correct so the internal details would show through, but after a bit of fiddling, I think it looks fairly... clear plasticy... which I then went on to almost ruin with my terrible light set up, but oh well...

Looks like a pen to me, and I'm quite happy with the results. 

Swirly Signet Ring

Well, my ring design for the 3D printing assignment has finally been finalized (or, should I say "finalized"...), and it certainly changed quite a bit from the rough 'sketch' designs that had been done last week.

I decided to go with the one ring design that was not a full ring as of last week's discussion, but had received the most positive feedback from my peers...

...Choosing said ring idea also included fixing all the geometry issues the original signet/emblem design suffered from...


   

(Old design with geometry issues vs. the new, much-improved design)

I managed to fix the holes in the geometry by doing a rough, but fairly complete redraw of the design, with a few changes, before noticing that the issues were stemming from some of the internal curves not touching and other little annoyances.... Oh well, the new design is preferable anyhow...

...But, of course, the newly made and now-loved emblem design had its issues...

I uploaded just the emblem design onto Shapeways and used their little render to see if the the design would hold up to a print, but alas, many of the walls were too thin for.... every material they offered.

 ... Back to the drawing board, or in this case, the Rhino window...

The design was simplified to take the wall thickness restrictions into account, and using one of the ideas that was suggested to me during our group discussion, the central design was replicated and flowed around the band of the ring.

  

The central design on the face that would be pressed into wax, if this ring was to be used as a signet ring, was momentarily omitted to prevent any warping in the design from the curve of the ring band.

  

The rounded part of the top face was essentially sliced off, the emblem design boolean-unioned on, and tah-dah, a slightly bulky, but fascinatingly swirly signet ring.

  

(Almost finished ring and the hypothetical design that would appear if the ring was pressed into wax)

There is one spot that I'm slightly worried about, but it might be nothing...

Where the two ends of the flowed designs meet, there seems to be some geometry that feels a bit funky, but its hard(ish) to see and might just be me... I dunno...

...Anyways...

Better HD renders to come, my laptop is still hating me (should just do them at school, I know...)

 

(Third picture: interesting render colours... for the fun of it...)

Everything looks alright on the Shapeways end of things, though for the material choice, pretty simple, this design is only printable in one material without another overhaul of parts of the design. Oh well, frosted detail plastic it is... pretty material, but I have a slight nagging sensation that it will be fairly brittle... but I don't mind...