White Tower Restaurant - 3D Printed Model

Wow! Impressive! Nice work!

  I can smell the grease and onions just looking at it.  Nice job !

On Tinkercad (mentioned in the web article) -- it's pretty nice in this way:  it's all on the browser.   The others are desktop (see note below though). 

It's an add/subtract 3D shapes style cad engine.  With an increasing amount of effort & experimentation its possible to use it to create complicated things.   But at some point if you need precision,  then it's not clear this can done with enough ease or even at all.   But it does has one additional nifty feature -- it will take javascript to create new shapes which can be part of your library.  There are also scores of shared shapes created in this way.

Tinkercad is also by Autodesk -- producers of Autocad.  I suspect they don't really want you to use Tinkercad but their Autocad core products.  Autocade or some version of them are rental-able these days, if memory serves correctly.  In a way this could be good because the seeming industry standard Autocad line is pricey.

Sketchup is original from google but spun-off (abandoned?) and is now its down product line.   I tried it but thought the jump up to paid fee was rather high.   I didn't use it to a complete anything tangible though.  But I see on the wikipedia entry two interesting features:  there's a web version released last november and you can use ruby (a programming language) to add extentions.

Meanwhile FreeCAD is just plain baffling...  but it is entirely free and open source.

I have been carrying around Michael Tylick's MR article on the White Tower Restaurant as well, but it keeps falling lower in the priority list.  The curves and window slats seem to be the most intimidating features.

You did a fantastic job!  

Maybe the solution to the fragile lights is to 3D print the "heads" and use brass rod for the arms. You could even use brass tubing containing a single wire lead, use the tubing for the second lead, and power LED smd lights.

What is also impressive is that you learned the 3D modeling software while doing the project.  Thanks for sharing.

Bob

I found that same article and used the plans to make my White Tower. Constructed with Polystyrene.

You guys know that Twin Whistle already offers a White Castle kit. 

• Pre-Cut Laser Engraved Walls
• Detailed Castings
• Cast Resin Towers
• Flooring and Interior
• Wide Selection of Graphics

I have a 3D printer and printing parts is not that fast to do.