The Official 3D Printing Discussion Thread

[Fat Brian]

7 hours ago, Spex84 said:

Looks like you're learning the best way...through experience! 
I didn't completely understand the steps you undertook to build the model, but I think maybe learning a bit more about editing on the mesh level (Mesh Edit Mode) could really help you avoid having to use a lot of Booleans. It's not necessarily a better way-- it just means fewer booleans equals fewer chances for something to go squirrely.
Maybe you already know this and I'm just over-explaining, but no harm done, right?

I started noodling around just to try and feel it out, here's what I came up with:

1.Made a large vertical cylinder and cut it in half at the centerline (so I can mirror it later). 
2.Selected some faces on the edge of the cylinder and extruded them to create the box-section axle.
3.Extruded the end faces once more and then scaled them down to create a tapered end to the box section.
4.Beveled the transition from the cylinder to the box section.
5.Added a cylinder and boolean Union'd it to the box section.
*Added a mirror modifier to make the model symmetrical across the centerline*
6.Create a long skinny cylinder to boolean the axle shaft hole through everything. 

 

 

 

I will take any advice I can get. I learned a lot of steps to do things but probably not the best way to combine them. I had wanted to do something more like this but didn't know how to pull the faces out of the cylinder like that. I also wasn't sure how the mirror function worked. If I have to rebuild this I will do something more like this the second time.

I did get the halves to print, I enlarged the hole 4mm and will put an Evergreen tube in there to hold it all together.

[Spex84]

Cool! That's looking good!

As for pulling faces, you can go into Edit mode (Tab), select some vertices, and drag them with the Move tool (or hit G (grab) to move them). OR, to extrude some faces, which creates new geometry, you can select some faces (you need to be in Face Select mode for this, vs Vertex select) and hit E to extrude them.