MakerBot Industries

Thingiverse Rendering of Fancy Toothbrush Case

When my daughter said she wanted a very specific toothbrush case, I was really only too happy to help out.  While integrating someone into the design process who has a shorter attention span than myself¹ does make things more challenging, there are some benefits.  If you ever have the chance to design with a child, you’ll probably notice a lot of “feature creep.”  The good news is that since their idea of what they’re looking for is so flexible, as long as you make a good faith effort and are trying they’ll be pretty happy with the results.  And, since much of initial designing efforts consists of just putting big chunks of objects into the approximately correct place, there’s no harm in having your muse walk off and talk to a cat for a while.

There are certainly opportunities for education as well.  We had to measure the diameter and height of her toothbrush with calipers, with her reading off the numbers to me.  She had to think about how the final object would look and how she would use it.  Her initial explanation had no opening to put the toothbrush in or take it out.  After discussing the options, she settled on a style involving two-halves as shown above.

Designing with OpenSCAD is shockingly kid friendly.  While SketchUp was good for quickly sketching out an idea, it was not very easy to revise it.  With OpenSCAD all I have to do is change a few parameters and the entire design can morph into something new.  My daughter was able to select her favorite handle width and height by comparing just a few options in very quick succession.

Once the design had been approved, it was ready to print.

…to be continued

1. Oooh!!  Shiny!! [↩]