![]() ![]() ![]() AoI is not intended as an engineering computer-aided design (CAD) tool, but rather as a three-dimensional design system for animated computer graphics. However, it has an extraodinarily minimal, wide-spanning and intuitive user interface that is very easy to learn, and it has the ability to output solids as STL files STL is the standard format for rapid-prototyped parts. ART OF ILLUSION 3.02 FREEĪoI was written by Peter Eastman and others and is completely free and open-source. There is a lot of good clear documentation that comes with AoI, and it is not the intention of this page to duplicate any of that. However, we have found a number of how-to hints that help when using AoI for mechanical design, and those are documented here. The AoI website has detailed instructions for downloading AoI and getting it working under a wide range of operating systems. Once you have installed it, go to the Scripts and Plugins manager (in the AoI "Tools" dropdown) and get all the scripts and plugins from the web (you won't use all of them, but they're quick to download, and this is simpler than deciding which you want and which you don't). Note that on some systems you may need to be the superuser or administrator to do this, as it will install a file on your machine. If you are going to use AoI for CAD (for RepRap or for any other engineering) start by getting familiar with it using its own documentation and examples don't begin by trying to design an entire mobile phone casing (or whatever you actually need) first off. It's important to learn without the added pressure of having to solve a specific design problem too. However, do make sure you explore and get familiar with Boolean Modelling (in the AoI "Tools" dropdown) and the use of the grid (under the "Scene" dropdown). I am assuming that you will be working in millimeters as the standard engineering unit. Treat one AoI unit as one mm, and experiment by building objects of about the size that you want to end up making. If you're from a place which has not yet discarded the archaic unit of "inches", a quick cheat is to set the grid spacing to 25.4 units, and the divisions per grid unit to represent the fractions of an inch that you wish to deal with. Your design will then be in millimetres, but can be worked on in inches. Open the object in the mesh editor (Object->Edit Object).Convert the object to a mesh if it isn't already (Object->Convert to Triangle Mesh).If you're working with an existing model that is scaled one inch per unit, you can convert it to millimetres using the mesh editor: Millimetres are strongly recommended for RepRap work. Hint: avoid doing booleans on coincident surfaces Open the transform dialog and set all scale factors to 25.4 (Mesh->Transform)Ģ.Select all the vertices in the model (Edit->Select All). ![]()
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