Making 3D shape by revolving half a cross section about an Axis.

May 19, 2017 8:21 AM

I have an image file that's half a cross section of a round object. I need to turn this into a 3D object file that can upload to Shapeways for 3D printing. I tried using Tinkercad and a few other online 3D tools, but I can't seem to find one that works. Is there a way I can do this for free?
posted by radwolf76 to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

Best answer: Sketch out the cross section in illustrator or another vector drawing program, memail or post a link to the file, and I'll do a rotate on it in rhino for you. Is it the full 360º sweep?
posted by signal at 8:36 AM on May 19, 2017 [4 favorites]

Response by poster: I only had it in PNG, but I was able to make this SVG of it in Inkscape. Will that do? And yes, I was looking for 360 about the long axis.
posted by radwolf76 at 10:15 AM on May 19, 2017

Best answer: Here you go. I included the rhino file, plus dxf, stl and obj, so you can see what gives you a better result. There's also a screencap so you can see if it's what you expected.
posted by signal at 10:27 AM on May 19, 2017 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Thank you very much, this is exactly what I needed!
posted by radwolf76 at 11:05 AM on May 19, 2017

Glad I could help.
posted by signal at 11:13 AM on May 19, 2017 [1 favorite]

… or it's a one-liner in OpenSCAD:

rotate_extrude()import("CrossSection.dxf");

OpenSCAD doesn't read splines, so you'd have to flatten the curved paths to line segments in your drawing program first.
posted by scruss at 6:51 PM on May 19, 2017