Would you print me this equation?

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I had a visit this week of a teacher interested on creating 3D prints out of equations. The thing is that most of the tools I used need to have a polygonal mesh in the form of an STL file in order to print an object.

I have found a couple of interesting tools. On one hand, Wolfram Alpha allows you to download any generated volume out of your equation, but you need to have PRO account. It seems you can have free PRO account for a couple of weeks, but later you have to pay a monthly fee. I did not explore that route any further.

The other is a piece of software called K3DSurf that does the job for free. It is interesting though it did not work in my Mac, not even after installing Qt3, but it worked in Windows XP. It is worth a try!

Comments

bbum said…
Look up OpenSCAD; it is a freely available algorithmic modeler that exports STL files that are easily printable.

I've printed quite a few STL files generated by OpenSCAD, in fact. See www.thingiverse.com for many examples.
4:55 am
misan said…
Thanks. I use OpenSCAD for 3D modeling of engineering parts.

However I do not see how I could use OpenSCAD to render the volume of a 3 variable equation.

It would be great f you can provide a pointer on how to do it.
12:00 pm
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