Nov.23, 2012

Doodle3D, created by Rick Companje at FabLab Amersfoort, The Netherlands, is a very innovative, but simple and intuitive sketching tool enabling everyone to sketch out a 2D doodle. Anyone who can hold a pencil to make his drawing can use it to extrude and twist his design into 3D, without having to use complicated 3D modeling tools.

"Even though 3D design programs are getting more user-friendly and accessible (ie. Google Sketch-Up) they still form a major barrier for the average person. There are websites like Thingiverse where thousands of open-source 3D designs are made publicly available by others, but of course it is much nicer to print your own designs." said Doodle3D.

The Doodle3D software consists of a drawing canvas, some buttons (ie. 'new', 'oops' and 'print') for starting, deleting and printing your work. After creating a simple line drawing the user presses 'print'. The Doodle3D directly generates g-code and seconds later the 3D printer starts imitating the user's pencil movement and prints layer by layer a 3D object from the 2D sketch.

The user can also sculpt the object much like you would sculpt pottery to make the 3D object more real than an stack of 2D identical layers. Furthermore the object can be twisted by rotating each layer slightly.

Doodle3D changes the way you use a 3D printer. Since the creation of the Doodle3D tool Doodle 3D has been hosting workshops at schools, after-school sessions, children's partyies and in FabLabs.

We found that when a child or adult sees his very first self-designed object rolling out of a 3D-printer, this directly improves their understanding of 2D/3D transformation concepts like scaling, rotating and translating. After a while when facing the (intentional) limitations of Doodle3D users start looking forward to use more complex design-software. - Doodle3D

Doodle3D can be downloaded for Mac OSX here. For Windows and Linux you can download the source code at GitHub. Rick is working on finalizing the iPad version of Doodle3D. So stay tuned.

(All images credit: Doodle3D)

Another interesting product from Rick is Doodle3D WiFi box. It is a WiFi device connecting your iPad/iPhone/laptop or other devices to your 3D printer. - Simply connect the 3D printer (currently only Ultimaker) to the USB port of the Doodle3D box, connect to the WiFi network and start sketching and printing in 3D. You can pre-order it now for 100 euro including VAT/BTW and shipping.

 

Source: Doodle3D


Posted in 3D Software

 

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