Spotted online, FreeCAD user Erika Heidi was keen to explore sketching on round surfaces using the Curves WB . As a fan of Star Wars her learning project leaned into the idea of a desktop death star as a small desktop organiser box. It’s a lovely object and a great example of sketching onto near spherical objects.
Erika says;
“I have been using FreeCAD for a couple years but only recently I started doing more things with it, partially I got motivated by the contests and community at http://Printables.com . So I started experimenting with more complex things, and it’s being quite fun”
If you haven’t come across the Curves workbench before it’s available via the addon manager and contains a broad selection of tools for working with NURBS curves and surfaces. It’s well described over on the FreeCAD documentation and there are numerous links to tutorials on how to use the Curves WB tools. Erika worked through these example techniques describing the use of the SketchOnSurface tool to map her complex sketch design onto the spherical surface.
If you are inspired to check out the Curve WB tools then there is also a huge thread full of information on this brilliant and useful workbench over on the FreeCAD community forum .
Erika has published the .3mf file over on the Printables site and has included some good advice on approaches to 3D printing this slightly tricky to print object. Huge thanks to Erika for letting us share her brilliant work.