You take something in the real world and design something that directly connects to it that provides functionality that would make sense in any other environment except the associated one.
I’m currently designing something exactly like this, I share it as a model on MW once completed, thus, I don’t wish to preempt it.
One random idea to explain the logic would be a usb powered fan mounted to a bike (one that actually goes outside). An impractical practical design.
A bike mount great, and a mounted fan great, but, a fan on a bike already in the open air - daft.
I’m hoping mine will be seen as ludicrous, I would have to come up with something new for the contest I know you will now create though as I’m hoping for launch in a couple of days.
[Update]
I have launched the stupid model I spoke of. I am hoping a future contest will include daft practical impractical entries.
Can’t wait to see what everyone else makes; I have zero interest in all 3 of these topics - but I’m sure there are some excited folks out there ready to get going on their ideas.
I have noticed the animal contest has a few obvious remixes that the ‘designer’ chose to withhold from the upload process and description of the model.
I have also seen that many models have provided excellent-looking raster images in full colour. They also have a printed model that shows no colour and the profile provides no colour. I dislike the message this tries to get over…
“This is what it could look like if only I had provided a print profile and proof of successful printing.”
Worse, they provide a colour profile, colour render, and a photo of a single colour model. The photo evidence in this case is not proof of a successful print as introducing colour changes could easily cause printing issues.
I think the rules related to these issues need to be refined and models disqualified from the contest if they manage to get through despite the community trying to clean them out by reporting each one.
OpenSCAD is pretty great, don’t be fooled by the quality of the models in that image, if you simply increase your $fn variable it becomes nice and smooth. Also while the latest release is from 2021 there are a lot of improvements in the development version too, but that requires you to download that one instead of ‘stable’. The last commit was 2 hours ago so I would call it anything but dead t.b.h. - I’m looking most forward to this competition given it can allow some pretty great things right inside MakerWorld that would otherwise not be possible without manual 3d modelling of the end-user.
I just hope it supports including things like fonts and other libs so that it becomes a bit more powerful to use on Makerworld, without it it’s pretty limited.
With the Makerworld integration the whole goal is to give the end user some control over some parameters in the interface without touching the code, so I don’t really see the argument for it not being user friendly. You can define which variables are editable and give them a description in OpenSCAD so that in the end the user just has to fill in some values.
I wanted the less smooth surface provided by the value of 50, but, the members of the Gang of Worms have a very smooth surface, I increased the value to 150 and the surface is as beautifully smooth as any of the gang.
It is how you use the software after time learning from it. The same with also software.
I have Schlong and Pencil Richard on deck. Printing some test pieces for a .2 model I’m working on right now, but after that’s done I’ll swap to .4 and give them a go
@MakerWorld
Does the OpenSCAD script has to be new and never posted in any other site to qualify for the contest? Looking at the current state of the Customizer, I need to modify the script to make it work.
Also, I’m afraid that since I have it available for download in another site, Printables, someone else can modify and post it as their own.
Went ahead and tried to upload my first OpenSCAD model here in MW and I can say that I like what I’m seeing so far. MW’s implementation of openSCAD is WAY BETTER than Thingiverse’s old implementation which was very clunky like all other openSCAD online implementations (OpenSCAD Cloud from Autodrop3d, https://ochafik.com/openscad/). Well done @MakerWorld!
If anyone’s curious, here’s the first of the many openSCAD models that I will be uploading to MW.
The filament is not worded as a requirement. It’s just an ad/suggestion to try their new filament as it may be a good choice for the application. It’s obviously the reason for a contest related to fishing gear, as it could generate sales. But it does not appear to be a requirement for entry.
Fishing gears are outdoor and the filaments will most likely need to have certain characteristics that PLA or even PETG doesn’t have. I cited ASA/ABS only because ASA is mentioned. For parts that require strength, I prefer PC. But I rarely use it and will probably skip the contests. That’s ok though. Plenty of contests to come.
There’s still a lot to improve on MW’s current implementation compared to the full fledged openSCAD application, e.g., no support for other fonts, no support to load STLs, no supports for libraries, etc., but as an initial implementation, I’m happy with it. Like I’ve said, it’s a lot better than the other online implementations of openSCAD that has been around for a while.
Edit: I saw your other post… Just to clarify what I meant with happy is the experience while using the online customizer. I have not really looked into the other aspects of it from a creator/designer standpoint.
It’s not at all required though, and there’s plenty of things that could be created where pla or petg would be more than good enough. But even still, there’s nothing stopping anyone from designing something for the contest other than their own imagination, regardless of whether they have the preferred filament or not. I probably won’t enter either, but that’s just because of my lack of interest in it.
