3D printing brick walls.

[ManHot]

Well it appears he deleted his videos. It’s really too bad because he was willing to share knowledge phenq where to buy and there’s nothing more noble than that.
I did find this tutorial that covers a very simple approach in blender.

This tutorial goes through the basics of what I did.

Thank you for this tutorial, it was extremely useful for me and will save me so much time! My little 3d print houses and stuff will be a lot less of a hassle from now on. I already made a very nice round stone street thing with it! I am now wondering if those nodes can also be used to make the face of the stones a bit more worn.

[timwatson]

Happy to help.

[chessie system fan]

As promised, here is the results of my brick tests against a resin brick building of unknown vintage.



This has been a helpful exercise and has shown me several things.

1. My paintwork technique leaves much to be desired. These are the better examples.    I had just used cheap craft paints.

2. Paint thickness makes a difference in the mortar lines. So the technique used dictates the design of the 3D models.

3. So airbrushing is more important the smaller the details.

4. On the bottom left square, the mortar lines are likely too thin and not deep enough. Compare to the bottom right square.

5. 3D models with crevices like brick *must* be primed.  Otherwise, the translucent green will remain in all the cracks.

6. Fusion360 really hates brick walls.  Perhaps due to the number of faces?

7. Probably a hybrid of the bottom left and right squares will be the best option.

[Sokramiketes]

Welcome to the F360 hates bricks club.  LOL.  I feel like I go down this path every couple of months and then set it aside due to computing issues.

Here's my thoughts on brick.

Scale brick never quite works unless you're willing to do some sort of photo texture and avoid a 3D face at all.

The best N scale brick building I have seen, ever, was built from Woodland Scenics wall plates.  The injection molded ones.  Those scale out almost exactly to 4/5ths of scale.  So the bricks are 4 rows for every 5 in real life.  It still scales right in your minds eye.  And that's because of the most important part of adjusting brick scale... keep the proportions!  The proportion of brick face to mortar joint is the thing that your eye will understand first.  Scale brick, but with massive joints looks way worse than larger bricks with the right balance of face and mortar.  Thanks to Vince Kotnik for pointing this out to me.

When you laser cut a brick, you only have one mortar setting, so you need to adjust the bricks size to bring it in balance.

With 3D printing there is another wrinkle in how the brick pattern is rendered against the voxel grid of the machine.

To dial in your machine, draw a to-scale brick wall.  Then step it up multiples, scaling everything together, until it prints clean.  Most brick walls are in good shape and flat, very flat. 

[wazzou]

The best N scale brick building I have seen, ever, was built from Woodland Scenics wall plates. 

I seem to recall the lasered brick by Monster was really good when they were doing it.

[garethashenden]

I seem to recall the lasered brick by Monster was really good when they were doing it.

Its available again: https://larkspurlaserart.com/monster-modelworks/

[chessie system fan]

You're right!

https://larkspurlaserart.com/n-scale-clean-brick-sheet-12x6x1-8-basswood-sheet/

[chessie system fan]

Welcome to the F360 hates bricks club. 

Does anyone know if there are any other programs out there that don't cost a fortune that do brick well?

[garethashenden]

In my experience even Solidworks doesn’t do brick well. The easiest way to do bricks is to draw a small section and then pattern it. But having hundreds of the same pattern all at once overwhelms the processor.

I’m using F360 on a one year old iMac, the one with Apple’s own processor. Autodesk just released an update so that fusion 360 runs natively instead of through an emulation layer. For me, this has made brick making slow, rather than impossible. It will figure it out, eventually. The more you can pattern in the sketch instead of in 3D, the better off you’ll be.

[JeffB]

I seem to recall the lasered brick by Monster was really good when they were doing it.

Laser etching/cutting brick is the way to go...  Working in HO, I have some acrylic that is the perfect thickness for near scale brick siding sections.  I can laser cut brick patterns so that the corners interlock using the bricks themselves.  Only required a very minor resizing of the bricks after compensating for the laser kerf.

Not sure how it would work in N scale.  You'd have to find the right thickness of material, or just use an alternate corner treatment.

I started out using fiber board, then basswood sheet for bricks.  Looks/works well enough, but the etched sheets warp badly when you paint them.  Perfecting sealing them beforehand would probably help, or in the case of Monster Modelworks, laser cutting them out of significantly thicker material...

Jeff

[Sokramiketes]

Does anyone know if there are any other programs out there that don't cost a fortune that do brick well?

I'm hopeful that the methods to carve in the mortar joint pattern instead of extruding brick faces allow it to process OK.  That's my next experiment at least. 

[Lemosteam]

I'm hopeful that the methods to carve in the mortar joint pattern instead of extruding brick faces allow it to process OK.  That's my next experiment at least.

Try this as well. Make a small pattern of loose bricks with the mortar spacing you think will print for you. Pattern them to a size you want X bricks high x y bricks wide. Leave the pattern with open bricks on the end for interlocking panels.

Draw a rectangle on the back, smooth surface of the full pattern minus the notches on the end. Extrude this to intersect the bricks minus the mortar depth you think will print.

This will make the wall thick enough to print and assemble. Use this as a basis to pattern again if you need a larger panel.

Experiment by removing  various windows or Boolean drip edge and header bricks into the panel. 

Here is my cut stone culvert  I made using this process.

http://www.keystonedetails.com/products/n-scale-details/2017/5/5/n-scale-4pk-prr-plan-57641-sm-circ-brick-culvert?rq=Culvert

[chessie system fan]

The first method I tried was start with the backing first.  Then I drew a handful of bricks which I mirrored until I had a tallish strip.  I then Mirrored the strip to add the length.  This caused Fusion360 to freeze up after every mirroring.

 My second method was to again start with the backing, but this time every brick was a separate body.  This was slightly more successful, but even then the test pieces were as large as it would go.

What I actually need is enough brick wall to make two foot long warehouses sort of like these two.

The throat of Chicago Union Station by Mike Danneman, on Flickr

Santa Fe U28CG 359 leads by Mike Sosalla, on Flickr

[rodsup9000]

  After many failed attempts at trying to print brick walls, I laser cut them on .125" acrylic now.
  This was my first one done. It's my sugar warehouse at the beet plant. I still have some refinements to do yet, but it looks better in person than in photos


 Close up









 The structure is about 18" long overall.







 

 

[Mdrzycimski]

Does anyone know if there are any other programs out there that don't cost a fortune that do brick well?

I use Onshape. It is free as long as you don’t mind that your designs are public.  It handles brick fairly well using Featurescripts.  I found a brick feature that someone else created in the public area.  I used it for my Concrete Skeleton building that I am designing and printing.

I tried to post a picture but Railwire won’t let me.  Maybe I am too new or haven’t posted enough yet.