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Saturday, February 16, 2013

Custom 3D printed designs with Makerbot’s Customizer App Customizer Thingiverse

This Site, looks like it would be a good way to get started with MakerBot Things and help you learn how to use OpenSCAD too...

Don

Customizer

Created by

MakerBot

Customizer by MakerBot is a simple way to make customized 3D Things that you can share, download and print!

Go there...
http://www.thingiverse.com/apps/customizer/

Developer Documentation

Customizer allows you to design parametric objects that can be customized with an easy web interface. We currently support OpenSCAD designs. Just upload your OpenSCAD script to Thingiverse and then anyone can open it in Customizer and customize it. Also, if you tag your Thing with the "customizer" tag, then your Thing page will automatically display an Open In Customizer button as a shortcut.

To make your customized Thing easy to use, here are some Best Practices.

Parameters

Most OpenSCAD scripts will just work (see: limitations). However, to provide the best experience, you'll want to format your parameters using special comments. These comments will allow you to define certain paramaters to be for instance, multiple choice drop down boxes or min-max sliders.

Parameters should be placed at the top of your script before the first module declaration and should be in the following form:

// variable description  variable name = default value; // possible values

The variable description line is optional, but is useful to give the user an idea of what the parameter defines.

Variable name will automatically be formatted to be more readable. For instance small_box_height would be labeled "Small Box Height" on the form.

The possible values comment at the end is also optional. If not defined, the user will see a simple text box where they can enter any value. By formatting the possible values, you can define the following form inputs as a comma delimeted list inside [ ]:

Drop down box
Numbers: [0, 1, 2, 3]
Strings: [foo, bar, baz]
Labeled values: [10:Small, 20:Medium, 30:Large]
Slider
Numbers only allowed, specify min/max: [0:100]

Variable default values must be either a number or a string enclosed in quotes. Variables that equal other variables or include operations such as + - / * will be ignored and cannot be customized. So for instance, the following variables will not result in a form input on the web page:

hole_radius = hole_diameter / 2;
height = 4 * 25.4;
function foo(x) = pow((1-x), 3);

A common operation may be to define hole_radius = 10 / 2 so it would be better to change it to hole_diameter = 10 and hole_radius = hole_diameter / 2. That way only the hole_diameter parameter would be shown on the form and the hole_radius would not, but still get calculated.

Default Preview Rotation

Some designs look best when viewed from a certain angle. For instance, perhaps your script adds text to the bottom of your object and you want people to see the bottom when the page loads. You can control the default view by adding a comment formatted like this:

// preview[view:south, tilt:top]

The view parameter defaults to "south east" and can take the following values:

north
north east
east
south east
south
south west
west
north west

The tilt parameter defaults to "top diagonal" and can take the following values:

top
top diagonal
side
bottom diagonal
bottom

Example

You can use the following form to preview what your script will look like after Customizer parses your parameters.

cube_size                      = 20; // [10:Small,20:Medium,30:Large]                      hole_diameter = 2.5;                      hole_radius = hole_diameter/2;                      // How deep should the center hole be?                      hole_depth = 1; // [0,1,5,50]                      show_wheels = "yes"; // [yes,no]                      // How thick should the side wheels be?                      wheel_thickness = 1; // [1:40]                      // ignore this variable!                      // foo=1;                      // don't turn functions into params!                      function BEZ03(u) = pow((1-u), 3);                      // ignore variable values                      bing = 3+4;                      baz = 3 / hole_depth;                      difference() { union() { translate([0, 0,                      cube_size/2]) cube([cube_size,cube_size,cube_size],                      center=true); if (show_wheels == "yes") {                      translate([0, 0, cube_size/2]) rotate([0, 90, 0]) {                      cylinder(r=cube_size/2,                      h=cube_size+(wheel_thickness*2), center=true); } } }                      translate([0, 0, cube_size-hole_depth])                      cylinder(r=hole_radius, h=hole_depth);                      }

Preview

Cube Size

Hole Diameter

Hole Depth How deep should the center hole be?

Show Wheels

Wheel Thickness How thick should the side wheels be? 1

Current Limitations

Scripts must have all the code they need in a single .scad file
Only put one .scad file in your Thingiverse entry
Cannot import external files (like .stl or .dxf files)
Can only be compiled to make a single .stl (suggest build plates of multiple objects for now)

Eventually we hope to remove these limitations. Although you cannot include external libraries, the following are automatically available to be included in your script:

Build Plate use <utils/build_plate.scad>
MCAD use <MCAD/filename.scad>
Pin Connectors use <pins/pins.scad>
Write.scad use <write/Write.scad>
Includes the following fonts:
- write/Letters.dxf
- write/BlackRose.dxf
- write/orbitron.dxf