...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...