I’ve been continuing work on Fort Nandar for a while now. This is a long running project that I’m trying to complete before the end of this month. It’s something that will ultimate be a paid model but on launch it’ll be free to even free tier patrons (then the bonus addons etc.. will be paid or available to paid patrons – maybe we’ll do a kickstarter too idk).
I’m at the point now that I need to start splitting the model into separate parts. To start I pulled the semi-finished model into a new blender file (since the working file is far too slow now). Then I created an array of 200×200 cubes that overlapped the model and used that to split each level of the fort. Now I’m going through the effort of adding dowels across the model – I have a couple pieces setup so I have to do a small test print to check the fit.
What’s left on Fort Nandar?
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Splitting model into parts (Prototype complete)
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Dowel prototypes + test print (In Progress)
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Adding a 1inch / 25mm grid system to the flooring
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Adding optional walls, doors and rooms layouts
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Test printing walls / doors to ensure that they function properly
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Adding windows and doors to the exterior
There are lots of other Bonus objectives outlined in my previous update on this over here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/145236547/ – you might notice that I re-arranged my todo list doing the last item first. Splitting to parts was really what I found most interesting recently while I think over the best way to add a flooring / grid system.
The dowels that I have need some work as well – they’re a little too small for magnets so I’d like to size them up slightly. They might also need to run deeper into the model in order to have a good friction fit. I’m not a big fan of OpenLock or DragonLock since those are proprietary systems. I think they’re free to use but you have to agree to their licensing terms and those could change in the future. The sizing of this fort won’t match other parts in their kits and it’s so big you wouldn’t necessarily want to add other parts so for now I think we’re good. If there was a good open source option I’d lean towards using that instead but so far I haven’t found one so I’m using my own.
My immediate next step is to give my printers print bed a good scrub / wash to fix some adhesion issues and then I’ll be working on the prototype print. I might skip over the grid system for now while I look into adding walls / doors etc…. that said – walls that slot into a standardized grid system would be pretty great…
That’s it for now – as always thanks for following along.