rob schick – creative technologist

Three Ultimaker 3D printers glowing on a dark exhibit table behind a white 3D-printed model of the Museum of Science and Industry, laid out on a teal-bordered numbered grid.

PROJECTS · 2017–2018

Physical to Digital and back again

A drone scan of Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry, turned into a printable model, split into 30 pieces and printed one a day in front of visitors. Today it’s part of the museum’s collection.

When

Spring 2017 to March 2018. The exhibit ran for the whole Spring Make Festival, March 1–31, 2018.

Where

Museum of Science and Industry (MSI), Chicago, in the Circuit Building area

My role

I was a sales and marketing manager at Dynamism, the 3D-technology company I joined in 2014. I started the project, made the scan printable, and shaped the exhibit with MSI.

With

Tyler Gibson and Ted Parisot of Helios Visions (drone scan) · Olivia Castellini, Senior Exhibit Developer, and the Fab Lab team at MSI · Dynamism 3D artists Chris Stucke and Aron Jones (mesh cleanup and dividing the model) · the Dynamism team (printers and filament) · 3D artist Thor Man de Kook (AR filter)

Tools

DJI Phantom 4 / 4 Pro drones and photogrammetry (Helios Visions) · Autodesk Meshmixer · Autodesk 123D Design · Formlabs Form 2 (proof of concept) · Ultimaker 2+ and Ultimaker 3 printers loaned by Dynamism (exhibit)

Size

About 30 inches long, assembled from 30 printed sections

Outcome

30 printed sections, the most intricate taking around 10–12 hours each. The 3D model now belongs to MSI, and the printed pieces are stored as artifacts.

A scan on Reddit

My first taste of 3D scanning came at Knox College in 2012, where I was studying computer science. I stumbled onto Autodesk’s free 123D Catch, which turns a set of ordinary photos into a 3D model, and used it to scan my boot. Then I got ambitious. I waited for an overcast day (soft light makes better scans), circled Knox’s 1857 Old Main building with a camera, and processed the photos with VisualSFM. Old Main is one of the sites of the Lincoln–Douglas debates. A friend and I even won a small grant to build a drone that could photograph it from above. We never got it off the ground, literally or figuratively, but the idea stuck.

In the spring of 2017 I saw a post on r/chicago that brought it all back: a 3D scan of the Museum of Science and Industry, captured by drone and rendered with photogrammetry. Drones with good cameras had finally caught up with the idea. The scan was by Helios Visions, a Chicago drone company founded by Tyler Gibson and Ted Parisot that does aerial mapping and 3D reality capture. I’d actually met Tyler and Ted at the monthly ChiVR (Chicago Virtual Reality) meetup, so I asked whether they’d be up for turning the scan into something you could hold. To my delight, they shared their data.

The scan that started it all. Video: Helios Visions.
Satellite view of the Museum of Science and Industry overlaid with a grid of automated drone flight lines.
Photogrammetry software window showing a textured 3D model of the Museum of Science and Industry above a strip of source drone photos.
Hundreds of aerial photos from an automated flight path, processed into a textured 3D mesh. Images: Helios Visions.

Making a point cloud printable

From drone photos to a 30-piece printed model, in seven steps.

A scan looks solid on screen, but what comes out of photogrammetry is a point cloud with a surface stretched over it. There are holes wherever the drone’s cameras couldn’t see, and a printer can’t do anything with that. To print, you need a “manifold” model: one closed, watertight surface with a clear inside and outside.

I used Autodesk Meshmixer’s repair tools to close the gaps. Then, in Autodesk’s (now discontinued) 123D Design, I built a solid base for the interpolated mesh to sit on, so the museum would rest on a flat foundation instead of a ragged edge of scan data. Our 3D artists at Dynamism, Chris Stucke and Aron Jones, also took some artistic liberties with the columns along the way.

Grey 3D mesh of the museum in modeling software, with some columns highlighted in green where geometry was rebuilt.
Cleaning up the scan: holes and line-of-sight gaps get filled so the mesh becomes a closed, printable “manifold” model. Image: Dynamism.

To test the result, I printed a tiny proof of concept on a Formlabs Form 2. The printer cures liquid resin layer by layer with a UV laser, building the model upside-down from the build plate, and the finished print gets a light sanding and a coat of mineral oil.

June 2017: the proof of concept rising out of the resin tank on the Form 2.
Inside a Formlabs Form 2 resin printer, a small model of the museum hangs from the build plate, lit green through the orange cover.
The proof of concept printing upside-down on a Formlabs Form 2, which cures resin layer by layer with a UV laser.

Pitching a museum

Later that summer, I got in touch with the manager of MSI’s Fab Lab and shipped them a printed model.

A small clear-resin 3D print of the museum on a rectangular base engraved with the words Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago, IL.
July 2017: a finished clear-resin model, its base engraved “Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago, IL.”

Predictably, the team at MSI loved it. It made the rounds among the staff and eventually landed on the president’s desk. Shortly after, MSI asked whether we could make a much larger version for its Spring Make Festival, a month-long celebration of the making community that ran March 1–31, 2018, and was open to ideas on how to present it.

I’d never designed a museum exhibit. But I knew what we could do with the tools we had, and I had an incredibly helpful partner in Olivia Castellini, MSI’s Senior Exhibit Developer, who helped validate the vision.

Flat illustration of the exhibit: a black table with three white 3D printers, an informational sign on the left and a person silhouette for scale.
Early exhibit concept: a table, three printers, and a model that grows. Image: Dynamism.

Designing a build you can watch

My first question was: how much larger? The answer turned out to be about 30 inches long. 3D printers are great for small objects, but once a model is bigger than the printer’s build volume, you have to cut it into pieces that print well and line up perfectly when assembled. My Dynamism colleague Chris Stucke spent hours in modeling software making sure they would.

We worked backward from the time we had. The festival ran a month, so we divided the model into 30 sections: one new part of the museum would be printed each day, set in place, and revealed the next morning. We numbered the pieces so the build would come together like a mosaic and look interesting every single day. The most intricate sections took around 10 to 12 hours each to print.

The 30 sections in planned print order, drawn from the real layout plan.
Top-down map of the museum model divided into a 6 by 5 grid, columns A to F and rows 1 to 5, each cell labeled with its print-order number from 1 to 30.
A large sheet of paper on a table printed with the red outline of the museum and a lettered grid.
The final plan, numbered in planned print order (February 28, 2018), and the same layout printed full size to check the footprint.
A small grey 3D-printed model of the museum on a light-blue sheet on a wooden desk.
Close-up of grey 3D-printed sections of the museum, showing domes and colonnades, with a copper coin beside them for scale.
Mid-February 2018: test prints of the layout and of individual sections (coin for scale).

The sign next to the exhibit put it best:

A Model Museum: Watch our building take shape. The 3D printers on the table are hard at work printing the very building you are standing in. Each day, a new piece of MSI will be added to the growing model.

The exhibit sign
Tall blue exhibit sign titled A Model Museum with sections headed Watch Our Building Take Shape and Printing for the People.
The exhibit sign: “A Model Museum: Watch Our Building Take Shape.”

Build month

A few weeks before opening, in February 2018, I was back at the museum, and a drone was flying over the front steps.

The Museum of Science and Industry's neoclassical facade and green dome seen across a snow-covered lawn under a pale sky.
A drone pilot in a high-visibility vest stands on the museum's front steps between orange cones while a white quadcopter sits on the pavement, with the columned entrance behind.
February 18, 2018: the museum in snow, and a drone flight at the main entrance.
A drone flight at the museum entrance, February 2018.

There were plenty of technical challenges, but it all came together in March 2018. With Ultimaker 2+ and Ultimaker 3 printers loaned by Dynamism, along with the filament, MSI’s staff took the pre-sliced files we gave them and set the printers to work. Every day, hundreds of museum-goers saw the printers in action and the growing model right in front of them. Over the month, thousands of Chicagoans got to see the technology at work.

Close view of three Ultimaker 3D printers glowing on a dark table behind a mostly complete white model of the museum laid out on a teal-bordered grid.
Day 25: the model filling in, with the printers working on the next pieces behind it.
The printers at work on the exhibit table, March 25, 2018.
Three Ultimaker printers on a dark exhibit table behind a partly built white model, with empty grid squares still visible.
Wide view of the exhibit table with three Ultimaker printers and the growing white model in front of a dark wall lettered Circuit Building.
A crowd of museum visitors, including families with phones out, gathered around the exhibit table and printers.
A smiling MSI staff member in front of the Maker Garage sign while children and a parent look at a display in the background.
Rob Schick, smiling, in a dark coat, leaning on the railing in front of the exhibit table with its three printers and model.
The exhibit table in low light on the festival's final day, with the assembled model, three printers and a few printed pieces set to one side.
March 2018 at MSI: the early build, the exhibit in the Circuit Building area, festival visitors, the Maker Garage next door, me with the model, and the final day.
Wide panorama of the dimly lit festival hall with maker stations, visitors and the exhibit table.
The Spring Make Festival floor, March 25, 2018.
The Spring Make Festival floor, March 25, 2018.

A permanent home

The last piece went in on the final day of the festival. The 3D model is now owned by MSI, and the printed pieces are stored as artifacts. I could not be prouder!

Close-up of the almost finished white 3D-printed model of the museum, with its central dome, colonnades and tall statue-topped towers, printers glowing behind.
Nearly complete: domes, colonnades and the museum’s caryatid towers in white plastic.

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

Buckminster Fuller, the quote I closed my talk about this project with

Afterlife

My relationship with MSI kept growing. During COVID, Dynamism helped fabricate face shields that were distributed to essential workers on Chicago’s South Side, and I hosted a couple of virtual Junior Science Cafes about the project.

I also told this story in two talks: “Digital Alchemy: 3D Scanning and 3D Printing the Museum of Science and Industry,” and a joint presentation with Helios Visions called “From Physical to Digital to Physical,” which is where this page’s title comes from.

A person wearing a respirator gives a thumbs-up beside a hand truck loaded with boxes of face shields outside a building.
April 2020: face shields made with Dynamism, on their way to essential workers on Chicago’s South Side.
The whole build, June 2017 to today, in 35 seconds.

Bonus: the filter that didn’t make it

We ended up leaving this one on the cutting room floor, but I worked with the talented 3D artist Thor Man de Kook on a Snapchat filter that drops a virtual version of the MSI model into your surroundings. Helios Visions was also building VR and AR viewers for the scan in Unity at the time.

Phone screenshot of an augmented-reality white model of the museum appearing to sit on a wooden table.
The Snapchat filter that didn’t make the cut: a virtual MSI model on a real tabletop.

What I learned

Looking back, nothing about this project was planned. It started with a Reddit post and a question — what if I could hold that scan in my hand? Every step after that — repairing a messy mesh in Meshmixer, building a base in 123D Design, slicing it into 30 pieces, pitching a museum — came from following that curiosity one move further than felt reasonable.

The biggest lesson I took away is to let curiosity and imagination lead, and then do my best to keep up. I didn’t have a roadmap, a budget, or a museum on speed dial. I had a small print that looked cool, and people like Tyler, Ted, Olivia, Chris and Aron who were willing to say yes to the next step. The project grew because the idea was allowed to get bigger than my plan for it.

It also taught me that ‘finished’ can look like letting go. The model belongs to MSI now, and the files aren’t mine to share — which is exactly how it should be. The best version of a personal project might be the one that ends up somewhere other people get to enjoy it.

Thanks to Tyler Gibson and Ted Parisot of Helios Visions for the scan · Olivia Castellini and the Fab Lab team at the Museum of Science and Industry · Chris Stucke, Aron Jones and the rest of the Dynamism team · ChiVR for the introduction · Thor Man de Kook for the AR model.

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