Thingiverse Thursday: Rock Garden
Sometimes we need a little tranquility in our daily lives. Print out this simple rock garden, grab some sand, and make your own zen moment.
While this is a great desktop toy that’s easily printed, this rock garden is a great example of using multiple tools to get a job done. The three main components of this design (The tray, rake, and stones) were all designed in different software.
The tray is a simple model that is comprised solely of extrusions. We also wanted to be able to resize the tray to fit any of the multiple printers we have lying around the office, without distorting the overall wall or floor thicknesses. OpenSCAD provides exactly what we need. OpenSCAD generates a 3D model based on a script that it is given, and excels at combining simple shapes. Our script takes in three user-inputted variables: Build plate length, build plate width, and wall thickness. OpenSCAD then generates a new tray that fits on our build plate exactly. Handy!
The rake is a slightly more complex model. It was designed using OnShape. OnShape provides a graphical interface for creating complex models in your browser, and makes sharing the models easy. Our rake model can be found here, in case somebody wants to edit the amount of prongs, or change the length of the handle.
The rocks were designed in Blender. Blender makes directly manipulating meshes very easy, and can quickly create organic shapes that are difficult to replicate in OpenSCAD or OnShape. Starting with low poly mesh spheres, we pushed and pulled on the vertices until we found a shape that we liked. By keeping the rocks low poly, we’re able to avoid having to print with support material!
As always, you can download these models for yourself on Thingiverse. Happy printing!
