Quick question to the community, does anyone have some good tools to sculpt stls or step files?
Context, I’m working on some decorative keychains and have a vector image and text I want to add to the base object. I’ve used aolidworks for both in the past with alright results but I’ve switched over to freecad this year, haven’t had a lot of luck adding in there, vector image is a tracing of a dog that I was provided, it’s simplified but still has a lot of components.
I did look into blender but be honest I’m totally lost using it and have no clue what I’m doing coming from parametric modeling, I’m not an artist at all, my comfort zone is functional parts usually, but was approached by a friend. I did do some mockups in prusa/superslicer where I’ve added my image and text as negative volumes and merged into a single part. It works but it feels like a really hacky workaround (relevant XKCD) and would prefer to do it right. Any suggestions or resources would be appreciated!
If interested, here’s the mockup that I’ve done a few test prints on, found I needed to change the line width of my vector a few times and made some features exaggerated so they’d come out more. I’ve (poorly) covered some identifying text on the back, left the rest as to get a feel for what I’m trying to do, did do some rough sanding on the below pictures. There’s a pocket on the top edge that accepts a keyring, it’s kinda chunky, about the size of a pog slammer or a thicker poker chip.
I use blender for editing STLs. Import your files, overlay them where you want them, select both objects, apply the boolean to subtract differences. This should cut the images out of the disc as a negative. Export as STL.
I’ll give that a try, thanks, figured it’d be something straightforward!
For simple stuff like this I’ll usually just do it in the slicer. Orca and Prusa slicer have some basic tools for this including using SVGs.
Yeah that’s how I did the mockup, I use superslicer on one printer and prusaslicer on the other so was hoping I could do something that’d be able to port between them easily.
On that thought, superslicer being based on prusa slicer, wonder if I could just import the project like I’ve done with filament profiles. Thanks!
https://github.com/MatterHackers/MatterControl
Creating 3d vector images is really easy with this. Is also a lot sleeker than Blender.
You could also probably use Inkscape to get DXF files for both sides of the coin, making sure the size is right and that the path accommodates the width of your letters/strokes. Then, hypothetically, you should be able to import the files as drafts and then convert them to sketches with the press of a button (in reality, this crashes FreeCAD for me lately, but it could be a quirk of my setup). If you’ve already modeled the coin itself and use the new sketches to pocket into the existing solid, IIRC it should work okay. FreeCAD would not extrude a non-contiguous sketch into multiple solids, but I think it’s fine as long as the end result is still a single body.
Yeah I used inkscape for the image dxf, good thought on the text. I’ll try it in freecad again, had it die on me a few times so I started looking into alternates, thanks!
