Transcription
In this tutorial, you will import the gridinity profile that we just created and use it to create a custom holder for a pair of pliers. To do this, you will import, orient, and scale a canvas image. Sketch the profile using splines and then extrude to finish it off. Don't forget that the main gridinity profile can be downloaded by all our paid Patreon members.
Welcome to the learning channel. Let's make a custom cutout holder for the Gridfinity system. So, the first thing we're going to do is organize some things. You can see that our Gridfinity profiles parametric design file is already inputed. This is the master file. So, we don't want to use this. We want to create other files based off of this. So, what we're going to do is just copy it and we'll paste it in the exact same location. And then from there, we can right-click and let's rename this as our buyer design. Now, original file is up on the screen right now. And just to show you, we can change the number of rows and we can change the number of columns very easily. And so, if you'd like to learn how to make this, you can head on over to the tutorial that we just produced. And also, for our Patreon members, you can download this file for free. So, let's just go okay.
We can hide this file and make sure to bring up our pliers file instead. Now, what we're going to do is import a canvas image. We're going to have a bunch of different custom designs for each tool in our toolbox. But so what I'd like to do is create a new folder. And this is going to host all of our canvas images. So I'll just call it our canvas images folder. And then within that, we're going to go to our file and upload the pliers image. And so this can be anything that you've taken a picture of. And once the file is uploaded, there we see it in our canvas images folder. So now we can go insert, insert canvas, and it should find that file right away. Again, this file can be found on our Patreon page. It selects the image and now our face we have to select. And there we go. Now it automatically adjusts it to the size of our face, which is good and not so good. We actually have to adjust the scale of it. So let's just spin it around to 90°. And now what we can do is hide our data panel. Click on our top face to orient everything. And let's go and expand canvases. Right-click on pliers and go calibrate.
So here is a suggestion. As we're taking photos of our tools, try and bring your camera as far back as possible where it can retain a good resolution of the image and the measuring tape. But uh the farther the distance away from our image, well, the less distortion with perspective will show up on our image. So you can see that here that the 8, 9, 7 in section is nice and straight but as it goes off to the side these are you can see it there is some distortion with perspective and over here as well that we're getting an angle going the opposite angle of of the top here and that's due to distortion because of our perspective. However, if you bring the camera very far away if you have a really good camera and then zoom in it will dramatically reduce the amount of distortion in the perspective. But anyways, now we've gone calibrate. I'm going to pick 10 and 30. And this is 200 mm right there. So you can see that our gridfinity grid system right here is nowhere big enough for our pliers. Now we could go back to pliers and go edit and we can move this. We can see that the width of it is fine, but the length of it is not. So let's just put it right there. We can go okay. And now we need to add some more columns to our design. So, let's go over here and let's call it four columns. What do you think? That's not quite enough. Let's go five. And I think that's going to do it. So, once we're satisfied with that, we can go back to our pliers. We can go edit and we can drag this using this little square drag handle and put it right in the position that we'd like. Perfect. Right there.
Here's another tip as well. You can see that I've kind of made a mistake with the canvas image. We've got uh a black background, but the black part of the handles right here. This side is fine, but the other side is a little hard to see. So, you definitely want to use a contrasting background to the colors of whatever tool you're going to use. So, this is perfect. Just wanted to take a moment to mention our sponsor, PCB Way. Let's say you'd like to make this profile part, but you don't have a 3D printer or CNC machinery. Well, PCB Way has got you covered. Just visit their website, drag and drop your file, and then select the material. If you select any of the metals in the list, you will automatically be quoted for CNC work. I had my custom safety razors manufactured by PCB Way, and they did a great job. Thanks, PCB Way.
Now, at this point, it's just a matter of sketching around our object. And so, we can create a sketch. Let's just pick that face of our part. And here we go. We can start sketching around it. Now, we can use a combination of the spline tool or straight lines or arcs or whatever we want. Here, I'm going to just create a few straight lines. And if you don't want it to snap to the grid, hold down command on Mac or control on Windows and then it won't snap to any point on the grid system. It's a little bit easier. I'm going to use my imagination here and not go into this little dip. I'm just going to move it on over and uh that will save some time. There we go. Those are our straight lines. But now I'm also going to use the spline tool to finish off the rest of our handle. And here the secret with splines are we don't want to use a a crazy amount of points. We just use them whenever the arcs start changing directions. So here we go. Something like that. And look at how few points I use on my with my spline. And there we have it. Just like that. And now we can grab the end points here and any point on our spline and manipulate it. So look at this. As soon as we click on the spline, we've got these control handles and I can move it up and down. And you can see it has an influence on the entire spline. So make sure that you change this. You can bring it out or bring it in as well to change the size of the spline. And I'm just going to slowly adjust all of this so that it conforms to the shape of the part. We can also go on over here and do this last one as well. Something like that. Beautiful. Everything's coming together very well. You don't have to think too much about splines. Everyone worries about splines a lot, but uh they're quite easy to work with. So, there we go. Something like that. And we're going to put a little bit of a uh an offset to this line as well. So, don't worry about it too much.
Now, I would like to instead of drawing all the way around the handles completely, I'd like to just cut across over here. And that will make it easy to pick up the pliers with my fingers either from the inside here, but also create some circles on the other side, which will make it easier to pick up the nose if I wanted to. But in order to make this part of the spline perfectly tangent to a a line, I'm going to click on the spline first of all, and you can see the control rod comes up. Then select the control rod and then hit vertical. And there we have it. So now this part of the spline and I can pick the spline again to pick the control rod. There we go. That way it will make sure that it will go perfectly in line with a line that I now create. So I can go from there all the way to the next point that this will start something like that. And I'd like to make this line vertical as well. So do something like that. This is looking perfect. And now I can go back to the spline and do the same thing for the rest of the handle. Make sure to hit the check mark when you're done your spline. Now let's do the same thing. Let's pick this control handle and go vertical. And we can slowly adjust these rods again in order to conform to the overall shape of our handle. You can see that I utilize the command button a lot. I'm on a Mac. So, and that makes it so that it doesn't snap to the grid. Again, makes my life a lot easier when I'm designing this and adjusting these spline control handles. Something like that. Beautiful. Now, let's go back to our line and finish this off. Okay. So, there we go.
Now, I'd also like to include some circles right here. So, I'm going to make these two points perfectly vertical to each other. So, let's go there and there. And now I can add circles right on these end points. I'm going to say that this is a 20 mm right there. And same thing on this side. I don't have to specify 20. I can just go equal with our constraints. Equal and equal. Perfect. And I can also trim all of this if I wanted, making it a little bit easier to work with. There we go. Once we're satisfied with that, we can go finish sketch and hide our canvas.
Now, I made a mistake on purpose. You can see as I hover over this face, it is all one closed profile. And we want this to be a separate closed profile than that. And the problem is sometimes if this happens, we have to go right back into our sketch and look really carefully. Where is the problem? And I see it right here. These two points are not connected. So, in order to connect them, let's go coincident. Connect that to that. And now the line kind of moved in a little bit. So, make sure to turn on the pliers and pull that line back. There we go. We want to make sure that nothing adjusted too much with our sketch. So, we can hide the pliers right now. And now you can see we have a closed profile on the outside and a closed profile on the inside. So, that looks great. Now, before we finish the sketch, we want to create an offset with all these profiles. And so, what I'm going to do is I'm going to select all of these different lines and splines that I created. But the easiest way to do that is double-click there. It selected this entire chain which makes our life very easy. Now let's go to offset and we can just move this on. Let's move it out maybe a millimeter and a half. There we go. And then I also want to change this inside profile, our original profile to a construction line type. Because right now we've got an outside closed profile and now a mid-closed profile and an inner. I could just extrude whatever I want. But to make life easier, I'm just going to double-click that, turn it into a construction line type, and now we have only two types of closed profile. So, let's go finish sketch right there. And now we can go extrude. And we can drive this on up however high we need to go. I'm going to say 15 mm. That's approximately the height of the pair of pliers that I have. And to finish it off, I can put some fillets on the sharp corners. And again, I'm going to be printing this with a 3D printer. And that has a nozzle diameter of 0.4. So if I go to 0.2, that should uh make it look more realistic. And I can just add some right there as well. So this is looking great. I think we're all done.
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