The Inner Prepper Emerges - Part 2
After feeling somewhat dissatisfied with the orthogonal look of the pimped barcode scanner, I decided it was time to step up a little in the design stakes.
My modelling process has always been around OpenSCAD. It wasn't until after using it for a while that I thought it was rather limited so built a groovy based framework that would wrap OpenSCAD. I could then easily programatically design objects and generate an OpenSCAD source file to be exported, sliced and printed. For anything reasonably complicated, I would find myself designing 2D views in QCad then importing them through the groovy framework, extruding and combining the objects and then spitting them out as OpenSCAD. It was a quick and easy way of getting the best of both worlds - the accuracy and rigour of QCad while hiding the lack of easy programability in OpenSCAD. The concept worked well until the model is no longer orthogonal or it becomes too complex - once you end up with more than 10 layers in QCad, it gets messy.
Anyway, it seemed I had reached the limit of "fluidity" with the design of the barcode scanner lid using my current system so I had a look at Fusion 360 to see what it was all about. Much to my surprise it was very similar to the way I currently work - design shapes on 2D sketches, extrude the parts and then apply transforms to the resulting 3D bodies. I like the fact that it is possible to later select any plane on the model and you are given a 2D surface to lay out new shapes, all fully dimensioned. I didn't have to change my mindset to learn how to drive it so it did not take too long to be able to knock up a simple model. Numerous introductory YouTube videos go a long way to helping as well.
I was pleased with how accurately it all came out. I was able to make a better fitting lid than what I previously had. Fusion 360 allowed me to make a more free-flowing curved shape and easily create a shell from it. That is something that was not possible to do from a 2D cad diagram.
Now the only real issue is the colour. I feel I am too lazy to paint it. Of course, I could just reprint in black filament, but that does require changing the spool....
And just to prove it does actually work in some manner...
