3D Modeling

Today I’m sharing my top 3D Models from 2025! What did you think this post would be about?

And some models from 2023, ‘24, and ‘26 as well, since I have neglected Thingiverse for some time.

I got into this hobby in 2013, and I 3D print A LOT. I’ve had more than enough time for it to become a part of my lifestyle and first avenue to fix things around the house. If you look at any room in my house closely, you’ll find many prints to organize and fix things.

All of the prints in this post are things I’ve designed versus found somewhere on the internet. I think it’s a pretty cool collection. Looking back, I am surprised how often I can fix or improve something with 3 bucks of plastic instead of buying a replacement.

My home automation dashboard broke down in two ways this year. Hardware, then software. My wife and I really liked this dashboard. It saved us from pulling out our phones and getting sucked into emails or social media while we were supposed to be living our lives.

Both breakdowns ended up in rebuilds. The hardware obviously solved by 3D modeling and printing and the software part became another problem I would vibe code - no - vibe engineer - my way out of.

After rebuilding, it is totally different. But cooler perhaps? And everything it uses should last many decades this time, instead of just one decade.

Here’s my most patriotic print yet! I have been using our new (hand-me-down) stroller a lot lately, for obvious reasons, and I decided there were a few things I just couldn’t go without.

So, I made a one-print solution that requires zero support and attaches to the handle of any stroller with hose clamps, which are shown here covered by separate printed strap covers to protect the leather of the stroller handle. I’ve deemed it the Strollerhock:

I have long been of the mind that LLMs and their evolutions are truly thinking, and that they are on their way to solving all of the intellectual tasks that humans can solve today.

To me, it is just too uncanny that the technology that seems to have made the final jump to some degree of competence in tasks that require what is commonly understood as “thinking” or “understanding”, after a long string of attempts and architectures that fail these tasks, is a type of neural network. It would be much easier to argue away transformer models as non-thinking stochastic parrots if we had happened to have had success with any other architecture than the one that was designed to mimic our own brains and the neurons firing off to one another within them. It’s just too weird. They are shaped like us, they sound like us in a lot of ways, and it’s obvious they are thinking something like us too.

Here’s a peek at my first major board game creation!

I’ve made a few clones or slight enhancements of games I like before like Nope and Hocken-Pocket-Blokus, but Bloom or Bust is my first attempt at something of my own design with very high production quality.

This is a risk-taking game where players compete to take over a tree with their specific type of fruit. Trees and bees are becoming a recurring theme in my games!

All parts of this game are hand-designed by me, mostly in VR with a tool called Gravity Sketch, blender, and one of my favorite programmer’s 3D tools called OpenSCAD.

This was a board game I “cloned” back in 2015, but newly redesigned in 2024 with resized pieces and a self-contained custom game box and instructions printed right into the box.

I love small games that travel well, and this game is about the same depth and nearly 1/4th the area of the original box - thus “pocket”. It’s a snug fit but nicely sectioned out for all pieces. Have fun!

Hocken-Pocket-Blokus Print Instructions

If you have a multi-filament printer, check out the new 3mf for “Hocken Pocket Blokus” - a self contained full blokus game and box with a hinged lid, and game instructions printed into the box.

If you like retro video games and also drinking things, you’re in luck! Print them for your living room! Print them for your friends! I hope these characters remind you of some of your favorite series.

I returned to this project after 10 years to make more coasters, including some designs for multi-plastic printers and a reinforced 4-coaster holder!

It was super fun returning to this project! I was able to fix a few things that I had noticed failing over the years, like the new reinforced sides to the “? Block” holder. Now that multi-color prints are proliferating more widely, I’m hoping people can use the new colored files - they really pop with the Silk+Matte PLA combo I used here. Links to those filaments:

I have been occasionally challenging GPT to create models using OpenSCAD, a “programming language for 3D models”

Both struggle, but GPT-4 has been a massive improvement. Here are both models’ outputs after asking for an acorn and 3 messages of me giving feedback:

For the record, it is impressive that these LLMs can get anything right with no visual input or training on shapes like these. Imagine looking at the programming reference for openSCAD and trying to do this blind. The fact that the 3.5 version has a bunch of strangely intersecting primitives and some union issues has been normal in my experience. It takes quite a bit of spatial logic to get a model not to look like that.

Raspberry Pi Control Panel is a hardware project I designed in 2016 to manage home automation systems. The project involved designing a custom 3D-printed case for a Raspberry Pi microcomputer with a touchscreen interface.

Links:

• GitHub
• Thingiverse

This game is based off of a similar card game called “No Thanks!” but expands the number of players to 8.