For this project, I decided to 3D print an iconic landmark of Seattle — the Space Needle. Over this past summer, I interned at an educational technology company and one of my coworkers 3D printed a whole bunch of Space Needle figures to give to the elementary school kids visiting the office. I thought that was a really cool souvenir to give away and it inspired me for this project. Now that I have the files for it, I can 3D print Space Needles for any friends or family that ever come to visit!
Design
I didn’t sketch out the Space Needle in my process since I originally planned on tracing the shape, but realize now that it may have helped in determining how my model was going to differ from the actual landmark. Since there are limitations with my abilities in Rhino, some modifications were needed. Although I didn’t sketch out the design first, I started off by seeking out a silhouette of the Space Needle and placing it into Rhino as a background bitmap. Then, I traced half of it:
This half was then revolved to create a 3D shape. I originally planned on adding more details to the Space Needle, like the gaps on the top and bottom, but really struggled with Rhino and left them out. I think this was because the angle of the part made it difficult to find the C-plane, or where to exactly put those gaps so that they would touch the surface.
To embellish the model a bit more, I ended up adding an extrusion of “seattle” on one side of the base (with the BooleanUnion command) and imprinting the shape of Washington state on the other side (with the BooleanDifference command). The final design in Rhino is pictured below:
When I transferred the file into MakerBot, I needed to scale the model up since it was only 2mm tall. I also needed to add supports since the top of the Space Needle goes out quite wide. In total, the printing time was just under 1 hour.
Here’s what it looked like when in first came out:
And after a bit of a struggle with removing the supports with a blade (and accidentally snapping off the needle part of the Space Needle in the process), this is what it looked like without supports:
And some close-ups of the text and imprint details on the base:
Reflection
Overall, this project was an incredible experience! There were certainly frustrations that I had with Rhino, but after I got over those it was a smooth process in general.
My biggest challenge with Rhino was being told there were naked edges in the extruded text, which meant that the surfaces couldn’t be joined. I’m not sure why that happened, but redoing the text and extrusion over again solved the issue. The next biggest challenge I faced with Rhino was finding the C-plane for attempting to add details to the Space Needle, which I resolved by just simplifying the form and leaving those details out. For future iterations of this project, I would maybe try adding them again and printing the model at a larger scale to make the details noticeable.
My opinion on Rhino is neutral. I think that it’s a very powerful piece of software, but there are opportunities for improvement in the interface. Specifically, I think that the language that it uses could be improved so that anyone could understand it. For example, when I want to do operations with two solids, it is not immediately obvious to me to start with the word “Boolean.” And when I was getting “naked edge” errors, I had to search up what that was. Also, the demonstrations in class were done in Windows and the Mac interface for Rhino was a lot different. I’m not sure why that design decision was made, but it made following the demonstrations a bit difficult.
As I was watching my model print, it was one of those moments where I was thinking about how cool technology is! It was incredibly satisfying seeing something that I created on the computer become an actual, physical object. I’m so glad that I know how to 3D print things now because it will definitely be something that I do in the future. And I really can’t wait to see how 3D printing advances in the future.
