Pen cup with a hexagonal grille
An 80 mm pen cup with rounded corners and one side perforated by a honeycomb grille you take ready-made from the store. Seven steps: extrude, fillet, shell, chamfer, and to finish, a SmartObject placed on a face — turned 90° so every hole prints standing up without supports, with a plain border around it.
7 steps
What it builds
- Sketch
- Extrude
- Fillet
- Shell
- Chamfer
- Code smart object
Step 1
Sketch an 80 mm square from the centre
Click Create sketch, then the flat blue square lying on the grid — the XY plane. Open the menu next to Rectangle and pick Rectangle (from center). Click the origin first, then a corner 40 mm up and 40 mm to the side: an 80 × 80 mm square centred on the origin.
Step 2
Extrude it 90 mm
Click Finish Sketch, select the square and Extrude it 90 mm, then confirm with OK (or Enter). A solid block the full height of the cup: the next steps round it, hollow it and finish it.
Step 3
Round the four corners
Click one of the four vertical edges at the corners of the block and, holding Shift, the other three. The last one is behind the block: turn the camera to reach it (drag with the right mouse button). Pick Fillet and give them a Radius of 10, then confirm with OK. Round the outside now, while it is solid, and the shell will follow the curve on the inside too.
Step 4
Hollow it with 3 mm walls
Click the top face of the block and run Shell with a Thickness of 3, then confirm with OK. The face you picked is the one removed: what is left is a cup with a 3 mm floor and 3 mm walls, rounded corners inside and out.
Step 5
Chamfer the inside of the floor
Drag the camera up with the right mouse button until you look down into the cup and can see the floor. Choose Select edges in the Selection menu — the edge where the floor meets a wall is easy to miss otherwise — click it and run Chamfer with a Distance of 2, then confirm with OK. One click is enough: the chamfer follows the edge round the rounded corners on its own. Esc puts the menu back to plain Select.
Step 6
Round the top rim
With Select edges chosen in the Selection menu, click the outer edge of the rim and, holding Shift, the inner one. Pick Fillet with a Radius of 1.5, confirm with OK and press Esc when you are done. Each edge carries the fillet all the way round, and the cup is kinder to the hand.
Step 7
Perforate one side with the Hexagonal Mesh, turned 90°
Rest the pointer on the SmartObjects icon in the right-hand column, type hexagonal in Search, pick the textures category in the strip of icons on the left (the hatched one) and click Hexagonal Mesh. The window closes and a bar at the bottom asks you to click a region or a face: click the tall side on your left, and its panel opens. Set Style to holes, Depth to 3 — the wall's thickness, so every hexagon goes right through — Rotation to 90 and Margin to 5, a plain border the grille leaves all round the side. Rotation is about printing: left at 0, each hole has a flat top edge parallel to the bed, a ceiling over nothing that sags as it prints. Turned 90°, every hole has a pointed roof the layers can climb. Building the grille takes a while, tens of seconds on a modest computer, and it rebuilds after every change: wait for the side to show its holes before clicking OK. It is the last step on purpose: nothing after it has to rebuild through the grille.