Using Mathematica for 3D Printing - Construct3D 2018

Many academics use Mathematica as a primary design tool for 3D figures and graphics. These designs are often very valuable for their illustrative purposes as physical 3D objects — not just as renders on the screen. In recent years, Mathematica has starting building 3D printing formats into it’s repertoire. However, some designers still miss the control offered by traditional CAD programs. This workshop will be a hands-on approach designing and exporting 3D printing-ready designs. We will learn about the native Mathematica 3D graphics format and how to access graphical data from within 3D objects. This will enable us to write scripts to control every aspect of the 3D mesh and, therefore, the 3D print. We will learn to create STLs and write our own OBJs. Please come prepared with Mathematica installed on your laptop.

This workshop introduces you to the basic 3D graphics format of Mathematica and explores ways in which these can be used to program grapics for 3D printed objects. The workshop consits of a detailed tutorial about the Mathematica 3D graphics language and several commands that can be scripted using mathematical functions to create intricate 3D prints.

There are 3 projects that accompany the workshop.

(1) Polyhedral Pendant -- Download the notebook here. The model of the example dodecahedral pendant is available in STL format.

(2) Parametric Torus Knot -- Download the notebook here. The model of the example (3,5) torus knot is available in STL and OBJ formats.

(3) Implicit Function -- Download the notebook here. The model of the example dodecahedral pendant is available in STL and OBJ format.

You can download the entire workshop as a zip file here.