Shelandy Ting: Serial Slice

The original idea is to make the serial slice of the whole piece of my 3D print design work "I meant it", to see how far the abstract expression of slicing can deliver different but interesting look of those 3D text sculpture.   However, because the huge amount of cut-out of the design, I have to compromise to do only one letter  among them.  I chose the "a" with the cut-out light channel of letter "e."  It would be very boring if I cut in the direction of Z or Y or Z axis.  So I decided to make it 45 degree to make a zigzag texture of its facets.

However, I did not realize the trouble I could encounter using this special cut angle, with the physical limitation of no more than and using .25"core and the maximal size of 3D model.  The available surface on each curve for placing the referenced core is too small.  I can hardly place them, not to mentioning that I have to put at least two cores inside each piece.  No matter how I move, there are always a piece that it will have a core for referring other piece crossing over its outline.  I spend a month to figure out how to make this work:
I have to find the exact core position first with the extruding height, then redo the slicing again with the appropriate core location and angle.  This is hard because I've rotate the plane of bird's eye view for 45 degree in two axis.  It is now difficult to move things which  have a same setting of displacements and angles.  Once I have the curves located in  the right angle and location, I make them become surfaces by using "planerCurve."  Then I use the intersection of the core and the planerCurve to generate the 'estimated' inner cut curves, by applying "curve from object" -> "intersection".

The reason I said 'estimated' curves is because it is not necessary the case: since the available top surface top for each block is so tiny, some core for registering other slice will be likely intersecting the contour.  As mater of fact, since the purpose of the cores is for referencing the orientation of a slice and lot of the edge of slice contour is composed of straight line segments, if we see a round edge cut through a straight line, we know it is the cutting residue of the core shape.  I make sure that each piece having at least two cores, yet keeping the number of cores to be minimal.  It took a long time to figure it out the best deployment of cores.  Once I got those contours, I group them and use the script to make the label, and manually clean it up because the slicing labeling script does not perform well in this case.

I make two keyshot rendering to simulate the martial I like to use.  I do think of use foam with sand splatting.  So the first one use I use marble texture to render it,

The second one use  red reflective glass with a background, to see how it looks alike to be a large scaled installation