Any Way You Slice It.

As I continue to look at 3D applications, it's clear that there are some really neat tools out there.  We've reached a point where any creative person who has an internet connection can create an object...upload it to an online application and get it "printed" in 3D.  You can even take a 3D object and use a tool like Autodesk123D Make to automatically slice the 3D object and have pages of cardboard laser cut and mailed to you or your child so they can "build" the object!  Take a look at this familiar object:

You can tell the application which way you'd like the object sliced and then have it sent off to be printed!  You can also download various size sheets and cut them out yourself. 

Seems like a lot of work to cut out all those pieces of cardboard and end up with a great model that will melt the moment some water gets on it.  Hmmm...ought to be some other way... Oh! What if you took those pages into CarveWright's using their DXF importer? And then what if you scaled them up to some fun size and cut them out of Azek? Then you could spend an hour assembling them and adding glue...but who would do all that?

Ok, why do all that? Good question. The answer is that sometimes the simplest way to get to the end goal is to figure out which road is faster.  I could spend hours creating a 3D object and have fewer detailed slices carved...the carve time increases heavily the more detail you have. Another method is to do something like you see above.  The carve took less than 40 minutes as it was only carving the outlines of the shapes.  It took about an hour to glue it up.  If I went the first direction, I'd have completed only the first couple of slices for this 32" rocket.  Now I can coat it with epoxy and sculpt all kinds of cool things on it and still have less than 2 - 2 1/2 hours in creating it from scratch.  The amazing thing? Outside of my CarveWright application...every piece of software needed to make this was online and free.  Any way you slice it, that's pretty cool.