AoC 2021 Day 22 Christmas Tree Ornament

prusaprinters

<p>The annual programming challenge <a href="https://adventofcode.com/">Advent of Code</a> had a puzzle this last year involving computing the <a href="https://adventofcode.com/2021/day/22">volume of an overlapping series of cubes</a>. The puzzle fits nicely into something OpenSCAD could visualize so for fun I decided to make it into a Christmas Tree ornament.</p><p>The uploaded files are all based on my puzzle input, but you can re-run the generator to get your own custom model. The source is at <a href="https://github.com/dimo414/advent-2021">https://github.com/dimo414/advent-2021</a> and it just takes a few steps to generate (assuming you have <a href="https://www.rust-lang.org/tools/install">Rust </a>installed):</p><pre><code class="language-plaintext">$ git clone https://github.com/dimo414/advent-2021 $ cd advent-2021/ $ cp path/to/your/input.txt src/bin/22/input.txt $ cargo run --bin 22 -- render &gt; render.scad</code></pre><p>Unfortunately the model is somewhat tedious to print since the middle is hollow and it consists of so many small features. I found slicing the model roughly in half and printing with the new “snug” supports worked reasonably well, though getting the supports out of all the nooks and crannies takes a bit of elbow grease. If you are able to print with soluble supports I imagine that would be much easier.</p><p>Once printed, cleaned, and glued together I simply drilled a hole into one of the cubes and screwed an eye bolt to create the hook point to hang it on the tree.</p>