April 16, 2022
Description
Generate a 3d model of data in a grid (great for "daily data for a year")
Personal side note
I added the two photos of the white graph after I originally posted this. The graph in those photos is particularly meaningful to me right now (March 22, 2020) as the world is living with the uncertainty of the COVID-19 ("Coronavirus") pandemic. The graph depicted in those photos shows the daily number of active (living, not recovered) COVID-19 cases in China from January 22 through March 20, 2020.
I live in the US, so why did I choose China? Because as of right now they are pretty much the only place in the world where the number of active cases is going down. This graph represents hope for the future, and the ability of humans to overcome challenges.
This script (daily-by-year-elevation-graph.scad) generates a 3d model
consisting of a grid of cells (X and Y axes) The elevation (Z axis) of
each cell is defined by a value in an array of data.
It also (optionally) embosses a label in the bottom of the model.
The included STL files are meant as examples of the types of graphs that can be created. They are made from the example data (data-by-year__example.scad). Those graphs represent weather data (high temperature and precipitation) for Zion National Park in Utah, USA for the years 2018 and 2019. (The OpenSCAD rendering and the red-gray-blue print show the 2018 daily high temperature data.)
you can name the file whatever you want and just change the include statement in the code.) 2. Open the file daily-by-year-elevation-graph.scad using OpenSCAD 3. Run the script to see a chart. By default the data is organized into a grid (from the top-down view) somewhat like a GitHub contribution graph. Each "column" (y-axis) is a week, with days running down from Sunday to Saturday.
However, the code doesn't require a fixed number of values or specific grid dimensions. By changing some of the variables you can use it to show (for example) days, hours, or even values where the x- and y-axis don't represent time at all. 4. You can change the data in data-by-year.scad. The format is documented there. You can also configure several parameters in daily-by-year-elevation-graph.scad, to change (among other things) the dimensions of the grid, the scale, etc.
Note that this code was developed using OpenSCAD version 2018.10.13.ci145, and it
uses some apis that are not available in earlier versions.
The "primary" home of this code is on GitHub: https://github.com/probertson/daily-by-year-elevation-graph
If you make improvements, please submit the changes as a Pull Request there.
Printer Brand:
Prusa
Printer:
I3 MK3S
Rafts:
No
Supports:
No
Resolution:
0.15
Filament:
eSun PLA+ PLA
Notes:
I just used default settings for this. Depending on your chart, there can be a lot of isolated towers (lots of stringing). So you'll want to tune your printer and figure out print settings that minimize stringing.
I like to use a different layer height for the "base" versus the graph itself -- it helps to make the separation more distinct (and also improves the speed a bit). I usually use 0.2mm layer height for the base, and 0.15mm layers for the graph. For graphs where the scale results in very small values, I used 0.05mm layers for the graph (otherwise those small values don't get printed at all). There is a variable in the code for setting the minimum layer height of your printer, if that's something you need to consider with your data.This could be used to make a 3d bar chart of any type of data. However, it was originally written to create a 3d graph of "daily by year" data -- that is, data containing one value per day, where an entire chart represents a year.
My employer, HireVue, Inc., provides an online job interview platform. The first version of this was created as a "hack week" project to create 3d-printed models of the daily number of job interviews, broken out by year. (See the photos for some of the variations, including a "tabletop" size using the default 2.5mm x/y dimensions for the towers, and a "pocket" size with 1mm towers.) In those graphs, each bar represents real people interviewing to get a job!
License:
Creative Commons — Attribution — Share Alike
probertson
