3D Design
Welcome to 3D Design! This page will cover various programs and techniques for making 3D Models on our 3D Printers. The programs featured on the page are the PrusaSlicer and Adobe Illustrator.
Basic Design within the Prusa Slicer
The Prusa Slicer can do basic 3D design when readying a file for 3D printing.
Shapes
The Prusa Slicer has shapes that can be added to your design-boxes, cylinders, slabs, and a gallery of different shapes. To add a shape, right click on the 3D printing board and select a shape from the dropbox.
Text
You can add text to a design by right clicking on the 3D printing board and selecting text from the dropbox. This will open the panel to the left where you can change the text, the font, the size, and if it engraves or has the text extended.
Modifiers
Modifiers are used for cutting holes or making specific cuts into designs. The example below shows how to make a hole for a keychain. To make a hole in the slab, right click on the slab and go down to modifiers. Select which shape you want your hole to be in and place it on the slab. On the right panel, click on the gear next to the shape. You want to change the infill and layers/perimeters all to zero. Once that is done, click on the shape and then on the slanted box next to the scale. This will bring down the shape to the bed so that it will cut through all of your design.
Supports
Sometimes designs need to have supports in order for it to be printed. In Simple mode, you can use shapes to add support by right clicking on your design and selecting support enforcers from the dropbox. In Advanced or Expert mode, you can paint on supports onto your design. Go to the toolbar to the left and click on the paintbrush icon. This will open the paint on support menu where you can paint supports onto your desings. With both options, you will need to have "For support enforcers only" selected on the supports option.
Simple Mode Box Enforcer 
Paint on the Supports Menu 
Painted Supports Look 
2D Image to 3D
This section will outline the steps for turning a 2D Image into 3D using Adobe Illustrator (App Version). If you are starting out, use a simple design like a logo.
Place a Picture
The first step is to find an image (either a JPG or PNG file) and place it on the blank space in Adobe Illustrator. To get an image, hover over the file and select from the dropbox "Place Embedded." Select your image. The image should appear attached to your cursor. Click a space on the white background to drop the picture.
Direct Select
Once the image has been placed on the board, you may have to direct select the outline (this step does not always have to be done). You do this by clicking on the white arrow in the left side toolbox and clicking on the anchors/grid of the image.
Image Trace
The next step is to image trace the picture (If the image tracing is not done, your image will be part of a slab). You do not want to use the AI Image Trace at the bottom of the picture's tool bar. Instead, you want to make sure the image is selected and go to the toolbar on the far right. Select Image Trace from the Properties panel (usually found under quick actions). Image Trace will then force you to select a filter. With a simplified image like a logo or basic drawing, black and white is usually a good option (the filter will change to custom within the image trace settings if you change an aspect of it). Once the filter has been selected, a box should appear next to it. Click on the box to go to the advanced options of image tracing. The image trace options will open in an image trace panel. Click on advanced to see all options. What we want to do to the image is to ignore the color. You may have to select the outline option at the top of the panel if the ignore the color option is not available. Use the eyedropper tool to select the background color. Once the ignore color is selected, click on expand. If the image trace is successful, the design should have vectors across it.
Image Trace Filters 
Image Trace Advanced Settings 
Open Advanced Settings 
Ignore Color 
Image Trace Result 
3D Effect
Once we have the image traced, select effects from the file toolbar. Go down the dropbox to 3d and select extrude and bevel. This will open up the 3D Effects Panel. For 3D options, you have plane, extrude, revolve, and inflate. Plane puts your design on a slab. Extrude, the most used effect, extends your design outward. Revolve spins the picture around to make it 3D while inflate makes your image into a bubble effect. You change the sliders on the panel to change the amount of 3D effect.
Collect for Export
For regular export, Adobe does not have a file type that we can use. We must export our design as an asset. At the bottom of the layers panel, click on the box with an arrow going out of it (Collect for Export icon). In the collect for export panel, select the format as OBJ (the Prusa printers take OBJ files). Then click export.
2D to 3D Same Colors on the Object and Background
If we have an image that has the same colors on what we want to make 3D and the background, then we need to be crafty with Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator.
We will first need to open up Adobe Photoshop. On a new canvas, place an image through the "Place Embedded" option under the file tab. Once the image is placed, use the AI "remove background" located on the bar underneath the image. The AI does a good job on removing the background from the subject. If you need to restore or erase things from your image, use the select and mask option on the bar underneath the picture (the bar will turn into the select and mask option after you remove the background.
New Fill Layer
With the background removed, we need to make the background a color not associated with the image we want to turn into 3D. From the file toolbar, hover over "Layers" and go down the dropbox until you reach "New Fill Layer." Select a color that your image does not have. For this example, I chose red. Once the layer is created, it will be in the foreground. You will need to make it into the background by going to the layers panel and dragging the layer down so that it is positioned last in the column. Once the color has become the background, export it as a JPG or PNG through the export option on the file toolbar.
With our newly made image, follow the simplified image instructions above except for the ignore color step. On the ignore color step, use the eyedropper on the color you made the background.
