United3dArtists Archive

Greetings all



When I searched "Thingiverse.com" for "truespace", there were a good number of people
who use TS. That was great to see.

Is anyone here active on thingiverse?

I'm new to this forum and am happy to have found like spirits.

Many thanks to forum host.


R

Thingiverse?

I have not heard of it... But happy to hear others using TS in it!? I am somewhat very active here. It's.. the forum I call home. I use trueSpace for my mesh modeling and some realtime graphics/motion graphics and animations.

Glad you could drop by. Do share!

3d printing thingiverse...my friend told me about it when he got a printer kit. I fixed him up with tS. There is .stl export which is needed for the models.

CROSS POST FROM SOURCE CODE THREAD


Interesting perspectives.

We've overlooked an important historical note.

In my opinion TS was ahead of the curve for the "era" and in most respects is still comparable to a mid range CAD (free or not), especially with plugins. What makes TS unique, to this day, is that the learning curve is shallow and the tutorials are reasonably good.

So, what did we overlook in this thread?

When TS was developed the VRML and MUD fever was at its peak and the desktop 3D additive manufacturing era did not yet exist. Caligari resources had reasonably been dedicated to developing Multi-user domains, 3D web interface design and a VRML export package, not desktop 3D printing. Now, a few years later, thingiverse.com has about a million free 3D files and lots of non-engineers (hobbyists) are looking for better CAD-Packs.

So the bottom line is that Microsoft holds the rights to a mid range CAD package that they can roll out with their proposed new 3D (multi-volume) file format, a range of 3D scanners (including phone apps) and multihead printers (including bio-printers).

That being said, I don't know what the future of TS is but there are certainly market forces that might give it a "kickstart". I can also assure you that its far from dead in the Open source Rapid Prototyping communities. They represent an entirely new and fast growing user group.

R

ah, my eyes hurt, pls stop using that yellow color on black.

btw: i was lookig there and find somebody using trueSpace 3.2 for modeling that 3D prints !!!

FYI: I fixed his text.

Hehe. A lot of personality.

Siderits, do you use Truespace?

Sorry about the text, got used to it in an IDE.

Yes, I use TS (3-7.61 but mostly 6 running in 7.6), for both teaching basic principles of 3D modeling to non-engineers, in BioMed and for Rapid Prototyping (since it exports and imports the STL's, to and from the 3D printing community). Scanned real world objects usually come into TS as DXF's or OBJ's (and some of the biological 3D reconstructions). The rendering capabilities in TS are still of acceptable flexibility and quality for my needs.

The low end home/hobby desktop 3D printers that I use (ABS plastic with one or two print heads) have about a 100 micron resolution and the Photpolymerization Resin printers have a 25 micron layer thickness. The prototypes are either testing-ready or production ready, usually within an hour or two. If I need higher resolution or different materials it can go out to one of the online services.

There are at least 15 other free and low end packages but I find that teaching basic principles seems to be particularly "rememberable" in TS, while allowing students to learn more in TS on their own or change to a different CAD that they prefer.

I also use the physics simulations and the flying camera avi's. Its sometimes interesting to grow things in TS (self instantiating Python scripts linked to objects). Wish it had a molecular modeling plugin. Ah well.

R

Wow! I would love to see some of this!

Do you use the collaborative modeling in 7.61 to teach? I started doing that, but decided I should probably map the trueSpace keys to Blenders to facilitate their learning (as I was starting to teach Blender also).

Do show what you do with python and stuff! Great work. Amazing to hear how trueSpace is still used with modern tech. WHat do you usually print?

Being able to go from "Art to Part" in real time is really important for Open Source Experimental and Rapid Prototyping in bio-tech (especially for teaching). You get to iterate through test/fail cycles in no time.

Some of the things and files that I've made while teaching are uploaded as STL's on thingiverse for the global 3D printing community and vary from useful, to biomedical equipment, to assistive medical devices to just fun. I release under "creative commons" so anyone around the world can download and print the solid objects in "real-Space". They're closing in on a million free searchable STL's at thingiverse. Here's some of my files.

Example: http://www.thingiverse.com/search?q=siderits&sa="

Sometimes I'll use TS to demo a technique like making gears for 3D printing or "Rapid technique for using Bezier curves to create interlocked and interleaved joints. Other projects dealt with things like physical modeling in TS. For example I did a paper on "Modeling Virtual Bite marks using TS". Sometimes I use TS in conjunction with other CAD/graphics/programming packages (geargenerator, img2cad, meshlab, netfab etc...) to teach basic micro-controller applications (Arduino, Labview or Scratch) while designing experimental field or laboratory equipment.

Example: http://www.instructables.com/id/Rapid-P ... g-joints-/"
Example: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:124188" (see video second image on list)

For teaching, most of the time I'll have pairs of students with different backgrounds (like Art/design/Medicine/education etc...) and we do the collaborative idea engine approach with a "facilitated design challenge". They install TS on their notebooks and we start with "primitive" modeling of their drawings for the project. I use TS for teaching but also demo in a range of other programs. The challenge for me is to teach CAD software independent principles that can be applied, by the "learner", in any package. Another challenge is to teach to different levels of "cross-familiarity" with design-rapid prototyping techniques-electronics-programming-astheitics-acadmics applied to a specific application.

Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJCgFzIUApA"

Other times, classes (undergrad/grad/post grad/professional) are dedicated to some more specific aspect of Rapid Prototyping of Experimental Laboratory equipment and are more comparative when it comes to CAD preferences.

The last Python project was a proof of concept for a grant and was a Parabiotic Neural Construct (PNC) grown in TS. It "gooed" memory pretty quickly but it was fun to watch and let me develop the pseudo code description while working on the algorithms (I know backwards).

Hope this answers your questions.

R

You should put that on Pinterest. Those print models are very clever and useful.