Generate your own unique snowflakes!

Click on “customize” to generate your own unique snowflakes! Print profiles with some examples for small (5 cm), medium (10 cm) and large (14 cm) snowflakes are available if you just want to print some snowflakes without going through the customization process.

The snowflakes are procedurally generated. Some look better, some look worse. If you get a bad one, just try again with a different seed for the random number generator.

Hoops

You can generate your snowflakes with one, two, three, or six hoops, which can be used to hang the snowflakes up, attach them to a gift, or string them together. You can select the number of hoops via the number of hoops parameter, and the diameter of the hoop with hoop diameter.

Printing Tips

In particular for smaller snowflakes it is advisable to print them by object rather than by layer. For larger snowflakes, adding some Brim Ears in pointy corners will help with the bed adhesion. The examples have been printed on an X1C using the textured plate.

Examples

How does it work?

Some random points are generated (blue in the graphic below). The number of points is determined by the number of points parameter (blue cylinders). A higher number of points will result in a more intricate pattern.

The points are generated within the sector specified by the radius and sector angle parameters (yellow sector below). The points are generated such that about 1/6th of them are in the immer most third (light yellow), 2/6th are in the middle third (yellow), and 4/6th are in the outer most third (dark yellow).

The points are then connected with a line (red below). The width of the line is given by the border width parameter. The line goes through half of the points in the inner most sector, then half of the points in the middle sector, then all the points in the outer most sector, then the remaining half in the middle sector and finally the remaining half in the inner most sector. The space between the line is filled with a plane that is lower than the border, as specified by the border height parameter.

The resulting half branch (red below) is then copied and mirrored (green below) to form a full branch.

Finally, the branch is rotated to create the 6 branches of a snowflake.

See also my write up on medium: [https://medium.com/@rat.and.robot/procedurally-generated-snowflakes-9368b6da133f](https://medium.com/@rat.and.robot/procedurally-generated-snowflakes-9368b6da133f)