How to scale your 3d model in Cura's Slicer

The TechNiverous channel is brought to you by these fine Patreon supporters. If you'd like to check us out on Patreon, pop over to www.patreon.com slash techniverous. That's T-E-C-H-N-I-V-O-R-O-U-S. Here, we do our best to stay up to date on the latest and greatest in 3D printing and tech, and keep you informed on the latest developments in these sectors. So, if you're interested in getting updates on 3D printing, or technology such as programming, robotics, artificial intelligence, and things of that nature, make sure you hit that subscribe button down below, leave a like on this video, and comment about what you'd like to see in the future, because we make these videos for you. Hey folks, I am TechNiverous. Recently, I've had quite a few questions about some of the tools that you can use here in Kira, especially I had a few people asking me how it was possible to scale objects that they had made in Blender. Now, I do have a separate video on modeling items for 3D printing in Blender, where I go over how to change the units in Blender, so you can get the exact specifications that you want. But there are other ways of doing this, and one of them is in your favorite slicer. So, let's go ahead and grab a model. I gotta find the right folder, because I'm disorganized here. So, let's do D3D printer models, and you can check out my thumbnails here. Now, these are all STLs. If you don't have this extension, it is a very cool trick. You should definitely check it out. And I do have a video up on how to obtain this here on the site, so feel free to take a look around. Let's just grab something random, because it doesn't really matter for this demonstration. So, this is a vambrace. This is actually Whistling Birds from the Mandalorian. This is one of the pieces of the Mandalorian armor that I printed, and you can also find that video here on the channel, although the set's not quite complete yet. This piece is a good piece to demonstrate on, I believe, because armor tends to be fitted to the wearer. So, I mean, you need to be able to scale it. This guy, dimension-wise, when you drag a model into Kira, it will tell you right here what the dimensions are, and this one is 100.1 by 115.3 by 154.5. So, that is your X, your Y, and your Z, or your width, your depth, and your height. And this is all in millimeters here. So, there is an extension to change everything to inches in here, but the standard for 3D printing and for modeling and things like that is generally in millimeters. Blender happens to not do that automatically, but if you use Fusion 360 or SolidWorks, things of that nature, they tend to be all in millimeters. So, you can see the dimensions of the objects as it sits now as I imported it. If I select the object, you get what is called the toolbar over here. Now, there are different options in here for doing different stuff, such as per model settings, and to flip an object to mirror it without turning it over, or to make the opposite side of something. And there is the move or the translate button. So, this basically allows you to grab it and move around the plate. That obviously is not on the plate, so you drop that there. And what we are looking for is this guy right here, and it's represented by this icon of a smaller object with a larger object behind it, and that is to show you that this is the button to change the scale. Now, there are several ways to do this, and we are going to go over all of them really quickly. So, what I can do is by percentage. So, if I wanted to do a half scale model of this, I could say 50% and hit enter, and you can see it changes all of my millimeter values, my X, my Y, and my Z. You can see it also changes all of my percentages, telling me that they are all set to the same percentage of the original height, and you can see that my model has shrunk. Now, the reason that all of them changed when I changed one is because of this box, which is checked by default, that is labeled uniform scaling. This means if you change the scale in one direction, it automatically adjusts the other two, and you can see that again when I pull on the actual axis itself. It's making sure that the dimensions of the object remain true to themselves and each other. Though the size is changing, you don't lose any of the details or get any flattening or anything like that. So, you can see the numbers changing as I scale to drag and drop here as well. We're going to go back to our original 50, and then I'm going to turn off uniform scaling because let's say this piece of armor fits my arm length perfectly, but I can't quite get my hand through this top hole here because it's not wide enough. In that case, what I would do is find the axis that correlates color-wise to the one I want to change. So, I want to make it a little bit wider in this direction. So, what I'm going to do is find the red label over here, and then I'm going to go over here, and I'm going to change this, and I'll say 55. You can see immediately the model elongates itself into an oval shape. That might be a little bit closer to what I want, so I'm going to leave it like that for right now. There are a couple other options as well. If you need something to be a specific height, and for this I'm going to turn uniform scaling back on so it retains the height that I'm at for these percentages. You can see that the top is still at 55. It will adjust that accordingly with the rest of them. So, what I'm going to do is, let's say I only want this, excuse me, so we'll say 70, and again it scales the rest of my model, and you'll note that the one that was at 55 percent before is now at 49.83, while the rest are at 45.3. This means that after we made that initial scale change with uniform scaling off, and then we clicked it again, it is preparing that, it's running that equation on all of them basically, so that it scales perfectly to be accurate to itself. So, that is a few of the ways to deal with scale in Kira. There are a couple other, they are a little bit more in-depth, or I guess tricky you would say, but this is as simple as it gets. And again, if you decide that you want to just go ahead and drag it out to a certain size, that's fine too. Let's go ahead and call the X 100, and hit enter. Now what I want to show you is the snap scaling, and I am on uniform scaling still, so it should scale all of them at the same time, because that's what that's for. This is not as smooth. It scales by a certain amount of millimeters each time. You can't get the dimensions in between. So, like basically, I think a better representation of this is for me to go ahead and grab a cube, so let's do that. Okay, I am back. I have my cube. This guy is a 25 millimeter cube. This is what's known as a calibration cube. You can print this, and measure it, and make sure that when you say you want it to be 25 millimeters, it comes out 25 millimeters. There are different ways to deal with under and over extrusion, so if the object doesn't come out to be measured as the size you specify, you're going to need to make some adjustments. And I have videos for that as well, so if you need those videos, leave me a comment down below. And I just wanted to show you this snap scaling real quick. We are going to leave it on uniform, but since it is at 25, this should make it a little bit easier. So basically, it is going up by increments of 2.5, and you can see it jumps from 127.5 to 125 to... I skipped a couple there, but you get the idea. It doesn't let you get to 120. It won't let you hit 118. You can still type 118 here, and it will adjust it, and then it also changes the scale that you're running on. Excuse me, it doesn't change the scale that it's running on. It's still 2.5 millimeter increments with the snap scaling. So that is basically it for this video, guys. Just a quick how-to on resizing models and objects in Kira. You can do this with any STL that you import, whether it be from Blender or Solidworks or Fusion or Tinkercad or any of those other programs. So it works pretty well in all regards. So if this video was helpful to you, don't forget to leave a like down below, and please hit that subscribe button, because we are always looking for more subscribers. I do videos like this quite a bit, and tutorials on Kira are one of my specialties. You should be looking forward to seeing different tutorials on each of these tools here, respectively. Even though they seem quite simple, getting into 3D printing, the actual slicing aspect of things, and dialing in a good profile for your printer is probably one of the most daunting tasks that there are. So stay tuned for more, and we'll be right back with you with another video. Well, that's it, guys. That's going to wrap up this video. If you've noticed the shirt, the merch is available. Go ahead and check out the Teespring merch link down below. It won't be available on a channel store until I reach 10,000 subscribers, and so far I am just about to hit 5,000. So it'll be a little while, a couple more months before you see this on the actual channel, but they are available now. I have a couple other designs. 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