by Zivbot, published
This customizer code generates countless varieties of castles with plenty of customizable controls. Read on for some tips and guidelines.
You'll be able to control the basic elements for a respectable castle:
Building (main structure)
Towers (ground rooted, sorrounding the building)
Turrets (recursively sorrounding towers / turrets)
Island (of course...)
When you start out, most settings are set to random and just changing the "random seed" value will mix everything. You can start taming your own castle by moving settings away from "0" or "Random" to chosen values.
I recommend you keep the details generation on "NO" for quickly trying different structures, and turn the details on when you're ready to produce. For non-trivial castles you may even get "script time-out" if you have details on.
Overall size is affected by several settings, so its easiest to generate what you like and then scale it inside your printing software.
The model is meant to allow for printing without supports (45 deg rule), but playing with some variables may lead to overhangs/slopes, so stay aware.
Producing the model with full details will take a long time.
We're talking hours, assuming Thingiverse won't shut me down first for hogging all their CPU.
Also geometry will get ---extremely heavy--- and lead to large file sizes (50mb and more)
When you click "Create Thing" your model goes into a production QUEUE and you get to choose "email me when its done", I recommend it.
If you're printing at a small scale (<4cm height?) or low resolution, you may want to forego details completely because they may be too small to notice
"Partial Generation" Feature: With this feature you can produce separate STLs for Roofs, Island and structures. This is currently good for rendering (e.g. KeyShot).
It's not optimized for multi-material printing, but if you give it a try let me know.
Finally, I've been itching to make a castle generator ever since visiting Neuschwanstein almost a decade ago. Some excitements never fade.
Can't wait to see the castles you'll make :-)
Write below with suggestions, requests and complaints - I'll try to deliver on future versions.
The code is of course easily available, so those of you into OpenSCAD are invited to develop it further. I've tried to make it clear and useful, and there are some basic algorithms (like for distributing the windows) you may find useful in other projects.
Its up on github: https://github.com/zivbot/castle
Printer Brand: MakerBot
Printer: MakerBot Replicator 2
Rafts: No
Supports: No
Infill: 10%
Notes:
I've printed a simple version so far (shown), at 75% scale. Normal settings. No special issues.
