One of 3D printing's great assets is its ability to customize. One way to do that is to add engraved or embossed text to a piece. In this chapter, you'll use the text object in Blender to add customized text to give the wearer an emotional connection to the bracelet. The skills you'll use include:
In Chapter 5, Building a Base with Standard Meshes and a Mirror, you used a cylinder and a cube as building block for your bracelet plate. Blender also has a specialized text object you can incorporate into your designs. You can add these the same way you would any other object:
This adds a new text object to your 3D View. By default, it simply reads, Text.
Like other Blender objects, you can use the Properties Shelf to transform the entire object, such as by changing its Location or Rotation:
When you create a new text object, it uses the Blender default font, Bfont, for your text object. I find it to be a solid font, though the capital J does strike me as out of proportion with the other letters:
The default font could very well meet your purposes. If it doesn't, Blender gives you the ability to fine-tune settings for your text objects, including the font type. You can use any font already installed on your computer, even a symbol font such as Wingdings:
When you do try to change a font in Blender, you are picking it by the filename of the True Type Font (.ttf) file that is installed on your computer...
Similar to the Bezier Curve in Chapter 3, Converting a Bezier Curve to a Properly Sized 3D Mesh, we want to convert our 2D text object into a mesh and make it 3D. Like most things in Blender, there are multiple ways to approach this.
You may have noticed in the Geometry section, there is a spot under Modifications where you can set up an Extrude height. This gives your text an exact thickness:
You would still have to use the Object | Convert to | Mesh from Curve/Meta/Serf/Text menu option like we did in Chapter 3, Converting a Bezier Curve to a Properly Sized 3D Mesh, to convert your work to a 3D mesh. This approach...
When we use the Boolean Union Modifier, our main concern is getting rid of internal vertices and overlapping geometry that would potentially confuse the slicer and the 3D printer. In the case of our coordinates, if we align them perfectly flush with the rest of the base, there will be no such overlap. We would be able to safely export our work without having to do the formal Boolean Union.
Since the Object Origin of our coordinates is at the bottom of the letters, we will want to set that to match the Z position of the top surface of our bracelet plate to line them up. If the letters were higher than that, our text would not be connected to the base. If they are lower than that, the letters would extend inside the base and create the confusing overlap:
The steps to look up that...
In this chapter, you finished your second jewelry piece. You learned how to add a text object in Blender and how to change the text, the size, the font type, as well as advanced settings such as line spacing. You learned two techniques to convert your text to a 3D mesh and how to align it flush with your bracelet plate. Finally, you reinforced earlier lessons by multi-selecting two objects and exporting them to STL format for 3D printing.
In the Chapter 8, Using Empties to Model the Base of the House, you'll begin another type of 3D printing project. You will start an architectural model by working on a house figurine.
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