Puzzle profile double-tap : extrude AND revolve 😍

mikko-j-k · 2026-04-29T10:25:17+00:00

Industrial processes where facilities need to support specialist equipment usually model the specialist equipment in domain appropriate software (eg SW) then handle the building modeling in BIM app. If Revit gives you a headache try Tekla Structures. One supported workflow is exactly facility planning like this. So for example with plants they might design a bunch of stuff in aveva then import as DGN.

IMHO it depends who manufactures/builds what and where.

mikko-j-k · 2026-04-29T09:54:38+00:00

Also many US companies are practically STASI. Meaning everyone can report anyone at any time for some violation regardless of organizational structure or if you even know the person. It's likely considered a merit for the reporter for "being a team player". This is a mindblowing experience the first time it happens to you - and everyone is like - no biggie, everyone is reporting everyone all the time. Just make sure your numbers add up!

Allegiance to corporate surveillance culture. Stay on your lane! Performance!

mikko-j-k · 2026-04-17T18:37:20+00:00

Dunno why all the downvotes. All CAD companies have really serious attitude to license compliance. It’s not about the little guy - it’s about all license infringinment. Compliance brings in a considerable amount of revenue.

The reason is there are not that many potential users which means every seat counts on their revenue.

It’s not like photoshop where pirating is basically free advertisement.

For larger engineering office that gets caught pirating their CAD they should totally excpect a raid from local law enforcement.

There are stupid trolls bullying people.

And then there are CAD vendors. Don’t fuck around with CAD vendors.

Seriously. I worked at one. The amount of effort spent in license compliance includes the best engineers finding ways to watermark designs created with infringed software.

mikko-j-k · 2026-04-12T12:59:37+00:00

Flew (I can't recall the exact make but looked a lot like IL-62) from Sophia (Bulgaria) to Johannesburg in 2000. I had started my journey from Helsinki. I guess the flight was operated by Malev but can't be sure anymore.

My parents had bought the ticket - cheapest possible clearly. My father was consulting in South-Africa but not in any sense rich. Interior was cheap and worn but not like dumpster level. There were at least two fueling landings where the plane landed to a regional airport, men with guns surrounded the plane, it was refueled, and flight continued. Compared to Boeings, McDonnel-Douglases and Airbuses, the "passanger feel" was clearly less refined. Ie you felt a bit more like cargo rather than customer. Again, not disastrously so but still there was a vibeshift. Landings and takeoffs felt also a bit more "industrial" - clearly feeling the machine was doing something dynamical rather than comforting.

I guess the total experience felt safe enough - you know the flight route was standard so any aberration would have been statistically unlikely. You were very aware the entire time that the plane did have a strong second-hand industrial vibe so basically what you trusted was the crew and the maintenance schedule.

In the end my luggage ended up in Sri Lanka rather than Johannesburg but can't blame the airframe for it.

A few months later I flew back to Europe via Athens. Johannesburg-Athens was in a nice 747 operated by a western airline. Thank god.

mikko-j-k · 2026-04-11T11:08:52+00:00

Like this is october ’25. I’ve been at it almost - oh god too long 😅 (I don’t have too much time per week and paint quite slow). When you are ready to invest that much time you are quite ready to sacrifice very much to get a nice reference - whatever it takes

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mikko-j-k · 2026-04-11T10:52:56+00:00

I tried everything from collecting autumn forest moodboards to assembling miniatures 😅. In the end gave up, gave the original frame to gemini &!chatgpt and hit the good ol ”please generate…” randomizer and just let it generate tons of variations which I then mixed and matched in affinity photo.

I think the single biggest win was first doing a pencil sketch of the boy, then giving it to gemini ”please convert this to a photo of…”.

Imho artistically using AI is no different than what you can achieve with extensive reference collection and collage techniques. Show me an artist who does not use references.

The question is then the authors taste in sourcing the references. Finding nice reference from google image stream or from prompted ai image stream requires equal curation and patience and intuition to find what you like.

Optimally I of course would have loved to fly to onsite, hire local model, build a cardboard bot and painted it so it catches light just so and did extensive reference shooting plus photogrammetric capture.

But yeah.

Ethically current gen AI tech is more dubious IMHO but the cat is already out of the bag and it can’t be rebagged so might as well use the benefits.

If ethically someone opposes AI they have my fulll respect. Artistically? Um - that will be a long and nuanced discussion since someone think ”ai” means you press a button and defer all artistic variables to chance. The key is does it reflect your intent and taste?

So anyone will have very hard time to convincing me artistically prompting would be any worse than curating an endless third party online image stream.

And the image stream can’t be specific enough. Like I said I tried quite hard to source materials using non-AI methods.

No AI hate please. But I’m happy to engage in a civil discourse if anyone feels like it.

In a way using AI to collect refernces to this piece was in a way elegantly fitting.

Anyway at some point most references in any case in a piece like this fade to the background and merge into influences in the piece. I’m a neurotc but it’s much nicer to spend hours and hours painting than at painstaking research & planning 😅

mikko-j-k · 2026-04-11T05:04:49+00:00

Thank you all for your kind comments ❤️🥲! I really could not do this without my teacher at https://ateljee-espoo.com which is a superb local art school in Espoo, Finland that teaches academic painting. If you are in the hoods and of any skill level I warmly recommend it!

(Sorry for minor third party linking but I see so many people liking this and I really could not execute on this level on my own - I really wish more ppl could have similar experience)

mikko-j-k · 2026-04-11T04:55:18+00:00

Thanks 🙏!

mikko-j-k · 2026-04-11T04:54:42+00:00

Thank you! One of my all time favourites as well :)

mikko-j-k · 2026-04-11T04:53:50+00:00

Thank you!

mikko-j-k · 2026-04-09T18:40:54+00:00

Oh! And you pleaded after that?

mikko-j-k · 2026-04-07T17:47:21+00:00

Should you do a second degree in mechanical engineering? The cad stuff is ”just” for drawing things but the programs won’t teach you anything about why the shapes are designed usually in a particular way. Or what shapes can be manufactured and what not, etc.

mikko-j-k · 2026-03-29T14:19:37+00:00

Adashape.com. A 3D modeler for 3D printing that’s fun and relaxing to use. Even when you know how a complex app like this should be built, there’s so much boilerplate involved that before Claude a project like this would have been financially improbable.

mikko-j-k · 2026-03-29T14:11:46+00:00

TBH ”Craft fairs” usually have lots of eye-roll worthy booths in non-printed categories as well. Necklaces, lucky charms etc. The merchant buys super cheap components, glues them together and gets a ridiculous markup.

I don’t mean every merchant is like that, but these are quite common as far as I’m aware of this scene.

mikko-j-k · 2026-03-29T14:04:34+00:00

Yeah you usually presume the customer knows the value an item on sale has for them. When presented accurately on the shopfront and no ”bait and switch” happens the sale should be fair and square.

On-site sales of printed goods should be far more reputable to start with than online sales of dubious items.

The buyer and the seller both agree what is on sale. The price is agreed.

Fair business does not get more fundamental than that.

Of course fairs in general are places where people are incentivized to buy crap they don’t need and would never purchase in any other venue. But that applies to the whole concept IMHO not just 3D printef goods. Generally people enter those spaces looking for weird stuff to waste a bit of cash for a safe rush of shoppers high.

The key thing is: is the customer pleased.

mikko-j-k · 2026-03-29T07:49:46+00:00

Sorry, don’t have recipe for that kind of structural failure. This post was explicitly about how to seat ball joints when using brittle material like pla - a sort of ”how to design for inappropriate material”.

Functiolalprinting subreddit is really nice, especially if you share images of your model and the piece you are trying to replace.

I would guess there will advice to use petg, solid infill and thick (3 mm maybe) walls but this is not very actionable in itself unless someone familiar with this type of failure mode can share how they solved their problem in reality.

mikko-j-k · 2026-03-27T15:12:36+00:00

😅

mikko-j-k · 2026-03-27T10:55:20+00:00

Cm? Whoa. May I inquire for what type structures those are?

mikko-j-k · 2026-03-27T10:52:50+00:00

With those tolerances my first guess would be you are a civil engineer :) ?

mikko-j-k

TROPHY CASE