An idea in the works ...
What if we could SCAN student projects and print them on our 3D printer? And of course it has to be easy and affordable!
The specific project in mind was one where 3rd grade students were studying covered bridges in their community as part of the annual Cambridge History Project.
Check out the 2 part blog post on this project here.
Third grade students learned about the history of the covered bridges in their community, sketched them, and then created a replica from cardboard, popsicle sticks, or other materials found in their art room.
They displayed them on a very large map at their
Celebration of Learning.
Meanwhile a group of 4th grade students learned how to use Cuttle.xyz and their Glowforge laser cutter to create a multi-layered map showing the location of all the covered bridges.
One idea they had was to create miniature 3D printed versions of the covered bridges created by the 3rd graders and place them on the laser covered map as a way to display the Cambridge Covered Bridge Project in their classroom beyond the Celebration of Learning. (Obviously the room size physical map and models had to be disassembled after the event)
This is where we started to research how to scan the 3rd graders bridges. We made progress in this inquiry, but in the end, we decided that to keep the map to scale, the bridges would have to be too tiny. So instead they used laser cut markers and a legend for their maps. Some students chose to use the traditional Teardrop representation as markers; others created stars.
However, I wanted to capture the valuable learning from our inquiry on 3 scanning so we could refer to it in future projects. I would love to hear about others who are using 3D scanning with students. If you have ideas, please email me at ldelabruere at gmail.
OUR INQUIRY in 3D Scanning (to date)
After much searching through Google, we settled on using the following feature of MakerWorld:
Image to 3D models
We submitted a photo and got a great OBJ file (or at least it looked like it worked well from the 3D viewer on my computer)
However, when importing into TinkerCad (the software students use) it said the OBJ file was too big at 40 mg
And that there were issues to fix.
I was able to use a 3rd party software to reduce the size and 'fix' the file
I was able to get the file size down to acceptable Size, but now TinkerCad says its too complex and import it.
Here is the photo I submitted and the resulting 3D model.
I did not feel I had the skills to figure this out, so I reached out to
my friend Rodney, who sent me a detailed explanation on how to fix this. Rodney graciously gave me permission to post his response to me here:
"This is a notice that I get from Tinkercad frequently. It is a simple fix.
I have attached the fixed file that can be imported into Tinkercad successfully and a description of how to go about doing that.
First, download and install 3D Builder if you have not already done so.
It is a Microsoft app that is no longer in the Microsoft Store app, but can be downloaded from the microsoft store if we follow this link.
Go to this link and then when there click on view in store which will open another window that will allow you do download it from the official Microsoft Store (see shot)
3D Builder is not a very complex program, but I use it for quick fixes on stuff it does do well, like reducing the number of faces in a model, rather than opening up Blender to achieve the same thing (with more steps)
Once you have it installed, and you import your .stl into it, it will look a bit like this...
As you can see, a very densely packed model (which is great if needed, but we don't need that much)
We want to select the model and choose Edit-Simplify
We will use the slider to reduce the number of faces and select "reduce faces"
Quite a difference...
Now we can import into Tinkercad easily.
Let me know if you need any further help with this.
We look forward to trying 3D Scanning in future projects. Along with 3D prints, we had aspirations to make a 3D virtual versions of this map and their research in Co-Spaces. We will be sure to post any future progress we make in this inquiry.
Update: Jen Mitchell emailed me and suggested using Merge Cube App to create 3D scans. We have not tried this yet.
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