Mastering 3D Design with Shapr3D

Thanks to Shapr3D for sponsoring this video. Alright guys, in this second video of our Shapr3D tutorial series, we're gonna go over the basics of creating 3D shapes. So if you're new here, I suggest starting out with our first video, where we went over the workspace and how to navigate within the program, which I'll have linked right up here. And as always, the program is completely free for you to use, but if you do decide to upgrade to the pro version, you can get 10% off by using my code BELVISHCREATIONS10 at checkout. Okay, so as I've mentioned in my past videos, 2D sketches is what makes up the foundation of 3D modeling. So what that means is we're going to use the sketch tool to create the 2D profiles we need and then use the 3D tools to generate our 3D bodies. So to start off, let's go ahead and click on the sketch tool. And as soon as we do that, the program is going to ask us to pick one of these three basic planes for us to start sketching on. So usually for furniture design, I like to start with either the front plane or this bottom plane here. So for this example, let's go ahead and pick our front plane, and immediately we're taken into a view that's normal to that plane. And the toolbar on the left here has now changed to show us all of our sketch tools, and additionally we have a toolbar on the right hand side now for us to use to constrain our sketches. I don't want to go too far into these right now, we're going to do a deeper dive in a future video, but I just wanted to show you guys what these are. Okay, so usually for furniture design, we would either start with the line tool or the rectangle tool. For this example, let's go ahead and pick the rectangle tool, and we can also activate this by pressing the R key on the keyboard. Another thing I want to show you guys real quick is that right now, we have all of the snapping functions turned on. and I'm also going to lock my grid size at 1mm, meaning that each of these squares represent 1mm. You can see that as I move my cursor across the screen, the dot is snapping to the corners of each of these squares, or in other words, it's snapping in increments of 1mm, which I find very helpful, but there are instances where you don't want that, so all you have to do is come up here and turn off this snap to grid, and now we can place this point anywhere we want without it snapping. Okay, so let's turn that back on and we're going to start drawing our rectangle. So we're going to start at the origin. So a single click will place that first point and now when we move our mouse around, we have a rectangle that rotates about that point. Alright, let's zoom out a little bit and we're going to move our cursor to the opposite corner and click again to place our opposite point. So pretty easy. Now if you're using the iPad, the method to draw shapes is a little bit different. So to draw a rectangle, what we want to do is set the Apple Pencil down on the origin, and then without lifting it up, we'll drag across to the opposite point and then take the pencil off the screen. And similarly with lines, we just set the pencil down at the starting point. We'll drag it across and then finish the line by taking the pencil off the screen. So it's really similar to say if we're drawing on a piece of paper, right? Okay, so back on the computer, you see now we have these dimension callouts on two of the sides which we can click on to change the value to whatever we want. So let's make this 600 millimeters wide by actually we need to click on this edge again to bring that dimension up and we'll make that 20 millimeters tall. So this could be something like a panel for a cabinet that we're building. Okay, so now let's exit the sketch. You'll notice that we now have this translucent blue fill inside of our sketch, which means that our sketch is fully closed. Or in other words, there are no gaps between where these lines close. And this is really important because 3D tools inside Shapr3D, or I guess any CAD program for that matter, they can only be used on closed 2D sketches. So in the future, if you're ever having trouble extruding or creating 3D bodies out of 2D sketches, just make sure that your 2D sketch is fully closed. Alright, so to get back into a 3D view, we can either double click on the navigation cube right here which automatically takes us to an ISO view, or just simply spin the model by using the right mouse button. Okay, so now we have our 2D profile inside our 3D space. We're gonna come up here to the Items Manager, and you'll see that our sketch is now placed under here. And we can also hide and unhide this sketch by clicking on this little eyeball icon right here. Okay, let's close that. And now in order for us to turn this 2D profile into a 3D body, all we really have to do is click on the surface right here, which automatically activates the Extrude tool and bring up these two arrows. And if we grab this arrow, we can push or pull this profile in either direction to create our 3D body. And just like earlier with the sketch, it'll bring up this dimension callout which we can click on and change that to any value that we want. So let's set that to 300 millimeters. And then you'll see that we also have this other arrow right here. And this is used to control the draft angle of our extrusion, which I don't really use whole lot, especially for furniture design, but it's there if you need it. Okay, so now we can just click anywhere in the design space outside of the 3D model to confirm our operation. And if we spin around, you can still see that we have our dimensions for the sketch. Also, if we go to the Items Manager, we have this body item under the tree, which we can also hide and unhide by clicking on this little eyeball right here. Okay, let's close that. So like I said earlier, let's pretend that this is one of the panels for a cabinet that we're making and we need to cut some data into it. And the process for cutting into 3D bodies is actually exactly the same as what we just did for creating this 3D body, except this time we need to sketch on the surface that we're going to be cutting into. So for this example, we actually have three different options. One is the bottom face and the other two are either the front or back faces. So for me, I usually like to do this on the back face. So I'm going to click on that and then select the sketch tool, which will automatically take us to a view that's normal to that plane. And once again, we're going to pick the rectangle tool. And since we are drawing a dado, we're going to place our first point along this bottom edge right here. And then just arbitrarily place the second endpoint somewhere over here because we're going to come back and set our dimensions. So we're going to make that 20 millimeters wide by 6 millimeters tall. Now to position this data where we want it, we're going to hold down the shift key and select this edge on the profile and then select the outer edge on our 3D part, which will bring up this dimension callout for the distance between these two lines. And let's click on that dimension and we're going to set that to 100 millimeters. Okay, so now we're gonna make another dado and I'm gonna show you how to place it within the center of this part. So let's go to the Rectangle tool and we're gonna draw another rectangle somewhere over here. And let's set the dimensions to 20 millimeters by 6 millimeters. So obviously we know this panel is 600 millimeters wide. So what we can do is hold down the Shift key, we're gonna pick the center point on our sketch. and then the outer edge on our panel, and we're going to set this dimension to 300 millimeters. And that's all we have to do. But let's say that we don't want to do any math in our head, or maybe this panel is some really weird number. What we can do is, let's undo that real quick. You can see that we have these three purple dots here. So the top and bottom dots are the midpoint of the top and bottom edges, and then this middle point is the midpoint of this entire surface here. So what we're gonna do is use the line tool and we're gonna sketch a line from this top midpoint down to the bottom midpoint. And then we're gonna grab the center point of this sketch right here and we're just gonna drag it over until it snaps to that line. And there we go. So that's a really good way to place something in the middle of a part. Okay so now let's exit the sketch. And we have our two profiles but you can see that if I hover over this rectangle, it's selecting the entire rectangle. But if I do it to this rectangle over here, you can see that it's separating it into two different surfaces. And the reason is because of this line that we placed in here. The program is seeing this line as part of this sketch or part of this geometry, and so it's splitting this rectangle into two separate parts. So what we want to do is click on this line so that we go back to our sketch, and let's click up here to go back normal to that sketch. Alright, so with this line selected, come over here to the right side and go all the way to the bottom and click on this Make Construction button. And you see when we click that, this line turns into a dashed line, meaning now this line is only used as a reference line. It's only used for helping to place geometry or helping to make measurements. It's no longer considered as part of the sketch. So now if we exit the sketch again and let's rotate out of that view, You can see that when we hover over this rectangle, it's selecting the entire shape. Okay, so now we have our two rectangles. Let's zoom out a little bit and we're going to select both of these by holding down shift on the keyboard and selecting both of these. So if you're on the iPad, all you have to do is simply tap the pencil on both rectangles to accomplish the same thing. So no need to hold down any modifier keys or anything like that. Okay so once both profiles are selected, it's automatically going to activate the Extrude tool and bring up the arrows just like before. And this time we're gonna grab the arrow and just push our profiles into the body that's already in there. And you can see how that's cutting out our data. Now before we click away to confirm that operation, I want you to notice that there's this little icon right here next to the dimension call out. So if we click on that, it's going to show us four different operations that we can perform on this extrusion. So right now the program recognizes our two extrusions are intersecting this main body that's already in here. So it thinks that we probably want to remove material, which is why the subtract function is selected automatically. If we select union, it's going to combine the two new extrusions with the body that's already in there and form one geometry. And if we select new body, It's going to create two new extrusions without affecting the original extrusion that's in here. And if we select intersect, it's only going to keep the geometries where the bodies intersect. And we're going to be using these other operations in future videos where we start designing furniture, but for now let's go back to the subtract function and click anywhere in the workspace to confirm that operation. So yeah, these are the fundamental steps for creating 3D bodies within Shapr3D. And just to summarize, we're gonna start out with 2D sketches of the profile that we want to create, and then we're gonna extrude that into a 3D body. And then we'll create other 3D bodies to cut features into our main geometry. But there are actually tools that we can use to modify geometry without having to create new sketches. So let's say that we want to create miter joints on the end of this part here. Instead of sketching a 45 degree line on this face and then pushing that material out, what we can do is pick this edge which automatically activates the chamfer fillet tool and bring up this arrow. And if we push this arrow into the body, it'll automatically create a 45 degree chamfer along that edge. And once we click away to confirm that, we can come back and change the angle of this face. So what we need to do is hold down the shift key on the keyboard, select the face, and then select the edge that we want to rotate that face about. And once we do that, we get this arrow that we can push or pull to change the angle of that surface. So pretty easy, right? Alright, now what we can also do with this tool is, if we select an edge to bring back up that chamfer fillet tool, and instead of pushing this arrow into the body, if we pull that away, it's now going to create a round over along that edge. And we can even click this little gear icon right here to change the way that this round over is created. So yeah, these tools make up the foundation for what we'll be using to model different types of furniture inside Shaper3D going forward. And I hope you guys enjoyed this video and that's going to help you get started with Shaper3D. And if it did, as always, be sure to let me know in the comments and give me a thumbs up. And also if you're new here, be sure to hit that subscribe button. and I will see you guys in the next video.

And as always, the program is completely free for you to use, but if you do decide to upgrade to the pro version, you can get 10% off by using my code BELVISHCREATIONS10 at checkout. Okay, so as I've mentioned in my past videos, 2D sketches is what makes up the foundation of 3D modeling. So what that means is we're going to use the sketch tool to create the 2D profiles we need and then use the 3D tools to generate our 3D bodies. So to start off, let's go ahead and click on the sketch tool.

And as soon as we do that, the program is going to ask us to pick one of these three basic planes for us to start sketching on. So usually for furniture design, I like to start with either the front plane or this bottom plane here. So for this example, let's go ahead and pick our front plane, and immediately we're taken into a view that's normal to that plane.

And the toolbar on the left here has now changed to show us all of our sketch tools, and additionally we have a toolbar on the right hand side now for us to use to constrain our sketches. I don't want to go too far into these right now, we're going to do a deeper dive in a future video, but I just wanted to show you guys what these are. Okay, so usually for furniture design, we would either start with the line tool or the rectangle tool.

For this example, let's go ahead and pick the rectangle tool, and we can also activate this by pressing the R key on the keyboard. Another thing I want to show you guys real quick is that right now, we have all of the snapping functions turned on. and I'm also going to lock my grid size at 1mm, meaning that each of these squares represent 1mm.

You can see that as I move my cursor across the screen, the dot is snapping to the corners of each of these squares, or in other words, it's snapping in increments of 1mm, which I find very helpful, but there are instances where you don't want that, so all you have to do is come up here and turn off this snap to grid, and now we can place this point anywhere we want without it snapping. Okay, so let's turn that back on and we're going to start drawing our rectangle. So we're going to start at the origin. So a single click will place that first point and now when we move our mouse around, we have a rectangle that rotates about that point.

Alright, let's zoom out a little bit and we're going to move our cursor to the opposite corner and click again to place our opposite point. So pretty easy. Now if you're using the iPad, the method to draw shapes is a little bit different.

So to draw a rectangle, what we want to do is set the Apple Pencil down on the origin, and then without lifting it up, we'll drag across to the opposite point and then take the pencil off the screen. And similarly with lines, we just set the pencil down at the starting point. We'll drag it across and then finish the line by taking the pencil off the screen.

So it's really similar to say if we're drawing on a piece of paper, right? Okay, so back on the computer, you see now we have these dimension callouts on two of the sides which we can click on to change the value to whatever we want. So let's make this 600 millimeters wide by actually we need to click on this edge again to bring that dimension up and we'll make that 20 millimeters tall.

So this could be something like a panel for a cabinet that we're building. Okay, so now let's exit the sketch. You'll notice that we now have this translucent blue fill inside of our sketch, which means that our sketch is fully closed.

Or in other words, there are no gaps between where these lines close. And this is really important because 3D tools inside Shapr3D, or I guess any CAD program for that matter, they can only be used on closed 2D sketches. So in the future, if you're ever having trouble extruding or creating 3D bodies out of 2D sketches, just make sure that your 2D sketch is fully closed.

Alright, so to get back into a 3D view, we can either double click on the navigation cube right here which automatically takes us to an ISO view, or just simply spin the model by using the right mouse button. Okay, so now we have our 2D profile inside our 3D space. We're gonna come up here to the Items Manager, and you'll see that our sketch is now placed under here.

And we can also hide and unhide this sketch by clicking on this little eyeball icon right here. Okay, let's close that. And now in order for us to turn this 2D profile into a 3D body, all we really have to do is click on the surface right here, which automatically activates the Extrude tool and bring up these two arrows. And if we grab this arrow, we can push or pull this profile in either direction to create our 3D body.

And just like earlier with the sketch, it'll bring up this dimension callout which we can click on and change that to any value that we want. So let's set that to 300 millimeters. And then you'll see that we also have this other arrow right here. And this is used to control the draft angle of our extrusion, which I don't really use whole lot, especially for furniture design, but it's there if you need it.

Okay, so now we can just click anywhere in the design space outside of the 3D model to confirm our operation. And if we spin around, you can still see that we have our dimensions for the sketch. Also, if we go to the Items Manager, we have this body item under the tree, which we can also hide and unhide by clicking on this little eyeball right here. Okay, let's close that.

So like I said earlier, let's pretend that this is one of the panels for a cabinet that we're making and we need to cut some data into it. And the process for cutting into 3D bodies is actually exactly the same as what we just did for creating this 3D body, except this time we need to sketch on the surface that we're going to be cutting into. So for this example, we actually have three different options. One is the bottom face and the other two are either the front or back faces.

So for me, I usually like to do this on the back face. So I'm going to click on that and then select the sketch tool, which will automatically take us to a view that's normal to that plane. And once again, we're going to pick the rectangle tool. And since we are drawing a dado, we're going to place our first point along this bottom edge right here. And then just arbitrarily place the second endpoint somewhere over here because we're going to come back and set our dimensions.

So we're going to make that 20 millimeters wide by 6 millimeters tall. Now to position this data where we want it, we're going to hold down the shift key and select this edge on the profile and then select the outer edge on our 3D part, which will bring up this dimension callout for the distance between these two lines. And let's click on that dimension and we're going to set that to 100 millimeters.

Okay, so now we're gonna make another dado and I'm gonna show you how to place it within the center of this part. So let's go to the Rectangle tool and we're gonna draw another rectangle somewhere over here. And let's set the dimensions to 20 millimeters by 6 millimeters.

So obviously we know this panel is 600 millimeters wide. So what we can do is hold down the Shift key, we're gonna pick the center point on our sketch. and then the outer edge on our panel, and we're going to set this dimension to 300 millimeters. And that's all we have to do. But let's say that we don't want to do any math in our head, or maybe this panel is some really weird number.

What we can do is, let's undo that real quick. You can see that we have these three purple dots here. So the top and bottom dots are the midpoint of the top and bottom edges, and then this middle point is the midpoint of this entire surface here.

So what we're gonna do is use the line tool and we're gonna sketch a line from this top midpoint down to the bottom midpoint. And then we're gonna grab the center point of this sketch right here and we're just gonna drag it over until it snaps to that line. And there we go.

So that's a really good way to place something in the middle of a part. Okay so now let's exit the sketch. And we have our two profiles but you can see that if I hover over this rectangle, it's selecting the entire rectangle.

But if I do it to this rectangle over here, you can see that it's separating it into two different surfaces. And the reason is because of this line that we placed in here. The program is seeing this line as part of this sketch or part of this geometry, and so it's splitting this rectangle into two separate parts.

So what we want to do is click on this line so that we go back to our sketch, and let's click up here to go back normal to that sketch. Alright, so with this line selected, come over here to the right side and go all the way to the bottom and click on this Make Construction button. And you see when we click that, this line turns into a dashed line, meaning now this line is only used as a reference line.

It's only used for helping to place geometry or helping to make measurements. It's no longer considered as part of the sketch. So now if we exit the sketch again and let's rotate out of that view, You can see that when we hover over this rectangle, it's selecting the entire shape.

Okay, so now we have our two rectangles. Let's zoom out a little bit and we're going to select both of these by holding down shift on the keyboard and selecting both of these. So if you're on the iPad, all you have to do is simply tap the pencil on both rectangles to accomplish the same thing. So no need to hold down any modifier keys or anything like that.

Okay so once both profiles are selected, it's automatically going to activate the Extrude tool and bring up the arrows just like before. And this time we're gonna grab the arrow and just push our profiles into the body that's already in there. And you can see how that's cutting out our data. Now before we click away to confirm that operation, I want you to notice that there's this little icon right here next to the dimension call out.

So if we click on that, it's going to show us four different operations that we can perform on this extrusion. So right now the program recognizes our two extrusions are intersecting this main body that's already in here. So it thinks that we probably want to remove material, which is why the subtract function is selected automatically.

If we select union, it's going to combine the two new extrusions with the body that's already in there and form one geometry. And if we select new body, It's going to create two new extrusions without affecting the original extrusion that's in here. And if we select intersect, it's only going to keep the geometries where the bodies intersect. And we're going to be using these other operations in future videos where we start designing furniture, but for now let's go back to the subtract function and click anywhere in the workspace to confirm that operation. So yeah, these are the fundamental steps for creating 3D bodies within Shapr3D.

And just to summarize, we're gonna start out with 2D sketches of the profile that we want to create, and then we're gonna extrude that into a 3D body. And then we'll create other 3D bodies to cut features into our main geometry. But there are actually tools that we can use to modify geometry without having to create new sketches. So let's say that we want to create miter joints on the end of this part here.

Instead of sketching a 45 degree line on this face and then pushing that material out, what we can do is pick this edge which automatically activates the chamfer fillet tool and bring up this arrow. And if we push this arrow into the body, it'll automatically create a 45 degree chamfer along that edge. And once we click away to confirm that, we can come back and change the angle of this face. So what we need to do is hold down the shift key on the keyboard, select the face, and then select the edge that we want to rotate that face about. And once we do that, we get this arrow that we can push or pull to change the angle of that surface.

So pretty easy, right? Alright, now what we can also do with this tool is, if we select an edge to bring back up that chamfer fillet tool, and instead of pushing this arrow into the body, if we pull that away, it's now going to create a round over along that edge. And we can even click this little gear icon right here to change the way that this round over is created. So yeah, these tools make up the foundation for what we'll be using to model different types of furniture inside Shaper3D going forward. And I hope you guys enjoyed this video and that's going to help you get started with Shaper3D.

And if it did, as always, be sure to let me know in the comments and give me a thumbs up. And also if you're new here, be sure to hit that subscribe button. and I will see you guys in the next video.

Transcript for:Mastering 3D Design with Shapr3D

Transcript for:
Mastering 3D Design with Shapr3D