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June 10: How to make a rock (using Onshape)



3D printing and my experience with it

    I have a decent amount of experience with 3D printing, I own a printer and have made a bunch of models. I have printed replacement pieces for board games, stencils for D&D battle maps. Whenever there is a problem that requires a small plastic piece of very specific parameters I can make a solution. At one point the band had water bottles whose handles would snap off every other second so I went and made a file for replacement. It is safe to say that in any practical situation I can make something. There is one thing I have no clue how to do, and that is make something completely impractical, so incredibly pointless that it exist for the shear fact that it exist. Today I made a rock.

A quick discussion on the concept of rocks

    Rocks do not have a reason to exist, they did not decide that they wanted to be, they simply are. Rocks are not uniform they do not attempt to be perfect in any way, a rock that is a perfect cube is no rock at all. Rocks are subjective, they do not have any objective geometry. When you are asked to make a Triangular prism there are very few choices you get to make. When you are asked to make a cube there is a total of one choice you get to make, size. When you are asked to make a rock you have infinite choice. The rock is your oyster. A rock is a canvas from which any shape can be formed. 


    How to make a rock, A step by step guide

Preamble

    This will work in any cad program I chose Onshape because it was between that and Tinkercad and I wanted to try something I had not used before.

Step One: Shape

    When I was making my rock I needed a good shape to start with. Make any shape (I went with a rectangle) and extrude it some amount. 
    

Step Two: Shape (but more natural)

    The next step in the rock making process is to chop away little bits of the shape until it looks like a rock (I feel now is an important time to remind everyone that a rock can look like anything this step is impossible to mess up). By using the Chamfer tool or by making a plane at a weird angle and extruding it using the remove option you can remove material in a way that looks more rockish. Repeat this process until your rock looks desirably rocky.
    

Step Three: Rock

    After you have a rock like shape give it some personality you can add whatever you would like in this step I went with a little face so he can smile at me once he exist.





Final Thoughts

    This was a very fun project for me and I hope it was a very fun project for all of you who followed along. I feel for me it was good practice for me design something intentionally imperfect. I also got to learn a new software which is always a good time. Making rocks gets 10/10 from me.




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