The Other Dove (Paloma)

thingiverse

This is a project that turns a line drawing into a 3D print. Here I take a photo from the internet of Paloma Picasso's Necklace "Paloma" (Dove) as the subject. I open the jpg in Smart Photo Editor, www.smartphotoeditor.com. I use an edge finder to mark out only the graphic area of interest and adjust some angles on the curves to get the look right for me. Next, I import the drawing into Inkscape, a free, open-source graphics program. I convert strokes to paths in Inkscape. I then import the drawing svg-file into Tinkercad, a free, web-based CAD program. Tinkercad automatically extrudes the svg lines about 2cm deep. This is a remarkably wonderful feature. Now, I download the file as an stl and load it into my slicer program, MatterControl, a free, open-source 3D printing program with internal slicing. To make the object a small necklace size, I scale it to 43x30x3mm. Paloma-small prints in 0.5 hours with no significant post-finishing required. The results speak for themselves. This was my second attempt at a complex extruded line object.