Sometimes you have to change a little aspect, as the text or one or more dimensions, of your object before printing. In these cases you can model from zero your object or try to edit it directly in your software. With OpenSCAD and the parametric design you have to simply edit a text or a variable in a editor and after a render you can save the STL file, ready to the slicer! I will show you two examples that have facilitated my life.
In the video below I show you with an example how easy is became to design and make what you want to make, thanks to the 3D printing. Now it is also valid for a novice like me. I was looking for a support for the brush heads of an electric toothbrush, but I didn't find a cheap one in the shop so I downloaded a version from Thingverse and modified using Blender.
The process can be reduced in four free and open source steps:
After importing DXF in Blender, some problems start immediately because the common commands present in any CAD don't exist in Blender, or simply aren't so simply to use as in the classical drawing software. Where is the offset? How can I put the quotas? And so on... Fortunately there is PROCAD that helps the users to fix some aspects of own imported sketch. Let's see how install it and translate the UI in English.
If you need a powerful and versatile 3D software not only for modelling and texturing but also for creating interactive applications, you should have to try Blender. Sometimes its interface can appear very different and problematic than typical software, as AutoCAD for example. But with a little of settings and of course patience and time, it's possible to overcome the initial shock and to import own 2D DXF file in this program. Let's see how.
I made some experiments about the embedding of interactive 3D objects into PDF documents with LaTeX, but the results don't satisfy me. The big problem is localized in U3D conversion of my 3D content, whereas the writing of TEX file and compiling with pdflatex, once I had loaded the movie15 package and read the instructions, is very easy and fast.
There are two main items to include 3D graphics in your PDF documents:
When I want to insert a 3D image in my articles, I make many attempts to find the best compromise between view and disposition of the scene, sometimes without getting discrete results and hiding particulars. Well, I should insert the real 3D object and give to the user the possibility to control it, shouldn't I?