3D Printing and At-Home Fabrication Tips

My 3D modelling has gotten ahead of my blog posting, so this one's going to be a two-fer!  I recently uploaded the last 2 buildings for Scythe : the Monument and the Armory . These two designs were made in opposite manners.  I built the Monument almost entirely in Fusion 360, whereas the Armory came out of Blender.  I probably should have made the Armory in Fusion 360 as well, since it's entirely a building with simple angles, but it just didn't work out that way while I was working on it.  After I finished modelling the monument, I had no idea how to even represent the armory, so I spent some time on Google and various forums and was using Blender to sketch out various shape ideas, and the castle shape just started working well, so I ran with it. Why use one versus the other?  Fusion 360 uses parametric design.  That is to say, you specify a bunch of parameters and it will interpret all of those parameters to make a shape.  For example, a simp...

I've made a lot of terrain pieces for Gloomhaven since I got my 3D printer, and I recently crossed that critical threshold where I can't just keep them all in a single box anymore.  I was spending too much time rooting around in the box for the pieces that I wanted, so I figured that it was time to upgrade to some kind of tackle box or craft storage box or something.  Just as I came to this realization, I noticed a post on the Gloomhaven subreddit about a craft store running a big discount on storage boxes.  When there's food on my plate, you don't have to tell me to eat! After picking up a few storage boxes, I went about sorting my pieces.  I decided to put them into a fairly large box that had removable dividers along the rows, which worked out pretty well... except that I ended up using almost every cell in the box.  I had to remove a bunch of dividers for the doors and the boulders and the cave stone pillars (which aren't even in that picture!), but the ce...

I just got a 3D printer (I ended up choosing a Prusa MK3 kit because I'm a nerd), mainly to make upgraded components for my tabletop games.  As such, it was pretty important to me that I be able to print minis, so I was a little hesitant to go the FDM printer route.  In the end, I decided to go that way because I didn't want to mess around with the resin from an SLA printer (I've got young kids in the house), and the Printed Minis subreddit had some pretty good looking FDM prints, so I figured that I'd give it a try. How do you get started with 3D printed minis?  Well, firstly, there's some software that you need to know about.  I'd say that there are two general categories of software that you'll use in 3D printing: software for making 3D models, and software for getting ready to print 3D models.  Of course, there is some overlap where a piece of software can do both, but 3D printing generally requires software to do those two things.  Today, I'm go...