How To Design 3D PRINTED Spiral Vases + Plant Pots in Fusion 360

today i'm going to show you how to design  sculptural 3d printed pots in fusion 360.   we'll go through each step of designing  and printing this pot and you can use this   process to make any shape that you can imagine  if you want to print these particular pots the   stl files are available through the link in  the description alright let's get started   we're going to model our pot using the create  form workspace this is an amazing part of fusion   that allows you to create complex sculptural  shapes but i think it's also one of the most   intimidating parts of the software however  once you get the hang of a few simple tools   you can create some incredible complicated shapes  without too much effort so we'll go ahead and   enter the workspace by clicking on create form  which is the purple box with the star and now   that we're in the form workspace you'll notice  that the tool selection at the top has changed   whenever you're creating a form you'll want to  start with a shape that's as close as possible   to your final product and since we're making a  plant pot we're going to start with a cylinder   so i'll go ahead and click on the xy plane to  start my cylinder and i've gone ahead and measured   my existing plant pot this one is three and a  quarter inches in diameter by three and a quarter   inches tall so we'll make our cylinder that same  size i'll type in 3.25 and click and then i'll   type in 3.25 for the height and you'll notice  that we now have a few more options to fill in   the first one is diameter faces and if we make  this number 30 for example you notice that we'll   now have 30 faces around the diameter the more  faces you add the more complicated modeling   you can do for our purposes i'm going to use 14  diameter faces we can also change the number of   height faces i'm going to choose six height faces  and you'll notice that i now have six faces along   the height we're only creating our cylinder on one  side of the x y plane and the next option is super   important symmetry if we select no symmetry  you'll notice that those green lines go away   but i want circular symmetry because my plant pot  is pretty much symmetrical around that center axis   and what this allows us to do is if we edit one  of these faces or one of these edges those changes   will propagate all the way around the cylinder  which speeds up things immensely and allows us   to get really clean professional results so i'll  go ahead and click ok if we double click on one   of these green lines you'll notice that the rest  of them turn yellow and this indicates that these   are symmetrical faces and anything we do on this  edge will also propagate to the rest of the edges   i'm going to right click on this edge and  i'm going to select crease i'll click ok   and now you'll see that our cylinder is faceted  all the way around the reason i'm doing this is i   want to create these peaks which spiral around the  perimeter of our plant pot increasing our shape   like this is going to make this a lot easier now  i want to select one of the faces all the way down   so i'm going to hold shift and click inside each  of these rectangles holding shift allows us to   select multiple things at once and the rest of  them turn yellow because we have that circular   symmetry now i'm going to right click again but  this time i'm going to click on edit form now   this edit form tool is the main tool we're going  to use here and you'll notice that it brings up   this really robust set of tools it allows us to  move things around it allows us to scale things   it allows us to rotate things and do these really  complicated sculptural changes in just a simple   step but for now i'm just going to hit ctrl z  to undo and i'm going to go into my top view   whenever you're in the edit form tool if you  hold the alt key it allows you to change your   editing into an extrude and that's exactly what i  want to do now so i'm going to zoom into my face   and i'm going to use this tool which allows  us to do edits along the x y plane i'll hold   alt i'll click on the square and i'm going  to pull out from the center of my cylinder   and you'll notice that now we are extruding  each face of our cylinder i only need to   extrude out a little bit and i don't want  to be too far to either one side like this   or like this so i'm going to stay as straight as  possible doesn't have to be perfect and come out   by about 0.05 inches all right that looks good  so i can go ahead and click ok if i orbit around   you'll see that we now have these rectangular  prisms arranged in a circle so now i'm going   to zoom in to one of my little valleys here  and i'm going to select one of the sides of   that valley all the way down again i'm holding  shift so i can select multiple things at once and then again right click and go to edit form  we'll go back into our top view to make seeing   our changes easier and now i'm going to make edits  without holding shift i'm just simply pulling   this face around in space and i'm going to use  this x y shift tool because i want to constrain   these changes so they only happen along the x y  plane and i'm going to pull this face to the side   so that i create the peak which is going to form  my spiral so i'm going to pull it to the side   until i have a peak in approximately the center  of my face that looks pretty good so i'll hit ok   i'll orbit back to the side and now i'm going to  select the other side of my valley everything got   a little change so it might be hard to see  but this is the face that we want to select   i held shift to select all of those faces right  click edit form now we'll go back to our top view   we'll use that x y plane shift tool again without  holding alt and we're going to pull it the   other way now as we're doing this edit we want  to be really careful that we don't overlap faces   or else when we finish this form fusion will give  us an error because we have crossing faces so   what we don't want is something like this once we  start crossing faces we are in dangerous territory   so i'm going to keep my faces all separate and  try to create a relatively symmetrical peak   i'll go back into my top view i'm just going to  keep moving this around until i like what i see all right that looks good so  i'll go ahead and select ok   so now we have this cool spiky cylinder and we  can start working on the profile of our plant pot   so now i'm going to go to a side view and  i'm going to window select this center line   so we have everything around  that center perimeter selected   i'm going to go to right click and edit form we're  going to use a new tool now within this edit form   toolset and that is the scale tool and it is  the dot right here so i'll click and hold and   i want to try to create the bulge in the center  of my plant pot i'm dragging it to the right to   increase the scale of this segment and that looks  okay for now so i'm going to click ok now i'm   going to hold shift and select this top segment as  well as the bottom segment because i want to make   the same change on both of these at once so i'll  right click go to edit form and this time we're   going to scale these parts smaller so i'm going to  click and hold on that dot and drag it to the left   and you'll see it starts to collapse in on itself  that looks pretty good for now and i'll click ok   and now i want to match the profile with these  other segments so i'll start with the segment   closest to the middle hold shift to select both  at once right click edit form and i want to scale   these ones a little bit bigger so i'm going  to use the scale tool drag it to the right there we go that's looking a little more  uniform so i can click ok so now that's a   nice uniform curve but it's a little more  pumpkin and not as much sphere and i want   this to be a little more spherical so i'm going  to select everything right click go to edit form   and now i'm going to scale this vertically so i'm  going to click and hold this horizontal line and   pull it upwards and now that's going to elongate  my shape trying to get it a little more spherical   that looks a little better but i think i  want a little more of a bulge in the center   so i'm going to select the center one more time  right click edit form and scale it up just a hair and i think that looks just about perfect   so now we're ready to do my favorite part of this  process and that's twisting our pot into a spiral   so i'm going to window select everything except  for this bottom segment right click edit form   i'll orbit so i get access to this wheel  here which allows me to twist on the xy plane   so i'm going to click and hold this wheel and  start rotating it around and i'm going to twist it   to 40 degrees so i'll keep going until my counter  hits 40 or you could just type in 40 right there   and you'll notice that this bottom segment is  now twisted that twist propagates a little up   into our next segment but everything else  is pretty much unchanged so i'll click ok   and now i'm going to select everything  except for the bottom two segments   again we'll right click edit form and i want  my twist to become gradually less and less as   we move up the pot i want to start really tight  at the bottom and then become more gradual as we   move upwards so i'm going to twist this  segment by 35 degrees instead of by 40. just type in 35 to make it  a little easier and click ok   beautiful so now as you might have guessed we're  going to select everything except for the bottom   three segments and you might have noticed that  i'm doing the selection in a side view and that   makes it really easy to select only the things  that i want i'll orbit back to our isometric view   right click edit form we'll subtract another  5 degrees and this time rotate by 30 degrees   click ok now we'll select only the  top two segments right click edit form   and this time we'll twist by 25 degrees   and you can see our gradual spiral coming  to life it starts really tight at the bottom   and then sort of unspirals as we come to the top  so i'm going to select the top segment right click   edit form twist this one by 20 degrees subtracting  another 5 degrees click ok and now i'm going to   select only the top edge right click edit form  and we're going to do a final twist of 15 degrees   beautiful i spent a bit more time playing with  this form and now i'm really happy with how it   looks so i'll go ahead and click on finish form  the first thing you'll notice is that this form   is completely empty when you use the create form  tool you're actually only creating a surface   so the first thing we have to do is make this  into a solid body to do that we're going to use   the boundary fill tool this tool works by filling  up a bounded volume with a solid our volume isn't   entirely bounded though because the top and the  bottom are both empty so to create those top and   bottom bounds we're going to use construction  planes so i'll create a new offset plane   go into a right view since we created this on  the x y plane i don't need a boundary plane on   the bottom i can just use the x y plane for that  but i do need a boundary plane on the top so i'll   drag my offset plane all the way up to the top  of my pot and i'll click ok so we'll go to create   boundary fill and we'll select the objects which  bound our volume so that is our pot the x y plane   and our construction plane our volume turned  green which is great that's exactly what we want   and we need to select it as a cell so  i'll click in this little check mark   click ok and there we go we now have a solid body   i'm going to change my visual style to shaded  with visible edges so you can see that and we   can turn off our surface at this point i'm going  to create a new parameter called shell thickness   and this is going to be the wall thickness of  our plant pot i'm going to make this 0.07 inches   i'll click ok and click ok so now we have a  solid pot and we need to hollow out the inside   your first instinct might be to use the shell  tool the shell tool is great but for something   like this it's probably not the best choice and  there are two reasons for that the first reason   is the tool will probably fail altogether if  we try to use it on our pot this is such a   complicated shape that fusion likely won't be able  to compute all of the offset faces it needs to do   for the shell tool to succeed and even if that  shell tool worked all of these spiraling faces   would be projected inwards and we would end  up with an unnecessarily complicated inside   which would likely add a lot of time to our print  time instead of that i want a nice smooth inside   we'll start by focusing on the top face of the  pot i'm going to create a new sketch right up here   i'm going to hit p for project and i'm going  to project the perimeter of this top face   so now that we've selected that whole perimeter i  can hit ok i'll double click on that perimeter to   select it click offset and we're going to offset  this inwards by the shell thickness and this is   going to allow us to get a really clean top edge  that follows the profile of the pot even though   we're not following the profile along the rest of  the height i'll select this profile right click   extrude and i'll extrude it downwards  by two times the shell thickness that's probably deep enough because  everything above here will likely be   covered in soil so now that we have a really  nice top edge of our pot we can focus on the   rest of the volume i'm going to orbit to the  bottom and create a new sketch on this face   now we need to find the center of this  face and to do that i'm going to create a   three point circle so i'll select three  points around the perimeter of this shape one   two three and now the center of this circle  is the center of our pot and while we're here   i'll just go ahead and create the drainage  hole i'll make this 0.5 inches in diameter   finish sketch now we need to create an axis  through the center of our pot so we'll go   to construct and we're going to make an axis  perpendicular to face at point i'll click there   and we need to select the face and  the point so there is our point   there is our face and there we go we have  a beautiful axis right through the center   of our pot i'm going to hollow out my pot  by revolving a profile around this axis so   the next thing we need is a plane on that axis  i'll create a plane at angle select the axis   and now we have a sketch plane so i'll create a  sketch and now we're ready to draw our profile   we have to make sure that the bottom of our pot is  solid so i'm going to draw a line horizontal along   the bottom and i will offset this line upwards  by the shell thickness i'll draw a vertical line   through the axis and i'm going to use a  spline to sketch out the profile of my cavity   remember we can always go back and adjust this  so it doesn't have to be perfect on your first go   so i'll connect that to the bottom click  on the check mark and then connect it   to the top there we go we have a nice  closed shape so i can finish the sketch   and use the revolve tool so here is my  profile my axis is the construction axis   and it looks like we didn't poke out  through the side of our pot which is great   click on and there we go we now have a hollow  pot and just to make things easier to see   i'm going to extrude out my drainage hole now since we're 3d printing this pot we don't want  the walls too thick or else we're going to waste   a lot of filament so i'm going to use the section  analysis tool to check on the profile all the way   down through the pot so i'll select the face as  the top and we'll start dragging this downwards   to see what the thickness looks like all the  way down the pot so that looks pretty good it   gets a little thick right here but all together  i don't see any areas that area is a little thick   that looks really good i don't think  we have to make any edits to the spline   but if we did we could always go back into this  sketch right click edit the sketch move any of our   spline points around so i can probably move this  point out a little bit finish sketch and those   changes propagate throughout my design so i can go  back to my section analysis edit that and double   check to make sure that i still don't have walls  that are too thin anywhere throughout my design   that looks great so at this point we're  pretty much ready to print at this point   i would suggest checking the dimensions of  your pot to make sure that your plant will   fit inside you can always scale it if it's not  big enough or scale it down if it's too big   so i've exported my pot to my slicer i'm using  prusa slicer but of course you could use any   slicer that you're comfortable with and we can go  ahead and slice our pot i'm printing this pot out   of petg using 0.2 millimeter layer heights petg is  a great choice for plant pots because it's really   durable and you can print it watertight i'll go  through the print just to make sure that there's   no areas that are too thin everything looks good  to increase the strength of this pot i increase   the number of perimeters from two to three this  is important in areas like this one where the pot   gets really thin having those extra perimeters  will just add strength to the entire piece   all right everything looks good to go so i can go  ahead and export the g-code and start this print this white petg is made by dyramic i really like  this stuff it looks super clean it prints well   and i'll leave a link for it in the description  along with the link to the stl files   this was my longest print yet clocking in at  just under 14 hours on my prusa i3 mark 3s   i planted this pot with a parlor palm i also  designed two more pots to play with some different   shapes the pot on the left holds azizy plant and  the one in the middle holds a peperomia rosso   the small pot in the middle is the first one  i designed and it took about nine and a half   hours to print the one on the left is the last  one i designed and i think it's my favorite that   one took 16 and a half hours to print it looks  like it's also abby's favorite she's my puppy   i made this pot slightly oblong by scaling it  non-uniformly in the y direction right before   printing thank you for watching and i hope you  enjoyed this tutorial as much as abby enjoys lying   on my foot if you use these techniques to design  your own pots or print the stls linked in the   description i would love to see your results you  can tag me on instagram @morleykert or leave a   comment on this video let me know in the comments  if you found this video helpful and what other   fusion tutorials you'd like to see in the future  thanks again for watching and have a great day

Channel: Morley Kert

Views: 47,195

Keywords: 3D printing, 3D printed, spiral, vase, plant, planter, pots, sculpture, ceramic, design, fusion, fusion 360, tutorial, modeling, tspline, spline, sculpt, form, morely, kurt, morly, morelykert, morleykert, how to, prusa, freeform, minimal, minimalist, designer, chic, cute, plants, apartment, beautiful, high end, home, house

Id: FTLb_tus4F4

Length: 21min 44sec (1304 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 27 2022