3D Printed Stencils | SelfCAD

Custom made Stencils can be a very cool, productive, and time saver tool for any Art project but typical design and manufacturing costs are astronomical and are therefore out of reach for most artists. However, that’s all changing, with the help of SelfCAD’s unique artistic modeling tools, you can design any stencil in just minutes, and 3d Print them for a fraction of the cost.

For our first design, we will create a stencil with nice leaves and for that, we first need to create the base, from which we will cut out our leaf pattern. Create a cube (you can find it in 3d shapes section). Set depth to 1.3 and apply. the base is ready.

Now we need to create our leaf pattern. For this use Image to 3d tool and choose the pattern. Image to 3D will give different results based on the quality and type of image used, so we need to adjust the settings to get the output we need. Set resolution to 250, Tolerance to 0.8, Amount to -8, blur to 3 and switch on Initializing to make our model smoother.

To position the leaves onto the base, use Scale with keep proportions option on. (You can find it in the advanced settings.) This is the fastest way to scale proportionally. Our base is 100 so Set X to 85 and this will leave us a margin of 15, divided by both sides, then open the Align utility select our existing model and set align to the middle. So our model is positioned in the center now.

Now we need to cut the pattern from the base. We will do in the easiest
way. Select both objects and use Stitch and Scoop tool with option difference. Choose our pattern in the dropdown, so it will be cut out and the stencil is almost ready. Also rotate and scale the object

I want to add a watermark now. As you can see, I’m using the Image to 3D Tool again but now the logo is cut out instead of the background. To change this use the flip background option. I will also change the amount a little. Then Scale with proportion option on, to 25 on X. and Rotate it by 90 on X I see I need to scale a bit more on Y. Then to position, Select the move tool, switch on Magnet and move it onto the stencil, as you can see the Magnet, makes it automatically stick to other objects.

This was so quick and easy, now I want to show you an interesting way to copy and automatically position the same logo on the other side as well.
Open the Copy Offsets tool, select the pivot option and make one copy, then just rotate and the design is done! Now, To print our model correctly Merge all objects then apply Magic Fix with 250 value to fix and solidify all objects and we are all done!