Planter generator: pots and vases that print without supports

The Planter generator is an add-on. Pick what to make, a shape and a texture, and the size of the store-bought nursery pot it is for; the live preview shows it at once and checks it within a second. Make it puts the file in the Planters folder, ready for the queue, a project or a product.

What it makes

• Standing pot: a pot for a nursery pot. Without a tray it is watertight and the nursery pot is the liner; ask for drainage holes if you want them.
• Wall pot: the whole pot (not cut in half, so the nursery pot still fits) with a rounded loop on its back that drops over a teardrop wall plate. The U-arch is a wall pot with a flat back, a round front and bottom, and an arched back board.
• Hanging pocket: a deep pocket with a round bottom and a flat back for trailing plants, its front lip lower so the stems fall over it. It hangs on the same wall plate.
• Wall trough: 2, 3 or 4 nursery pots side by side, flat at the back, on a wall plate under each end pot. A trough longer than your bed is made in pieces, cut between the pots: each piece has its own end wall (it holds water by itself) and hangs on its own plates, and a small clip goes over the rims at each joint.
• Vase: tall and watertight, 20, 25 or 30 cm, with the opening as wide as you set it.

Shapes (egg, cylinder, tapered, barrel, low bowl, hexagon, square, rounded square, tall slim, the U-arch; for vases tall egg, globe, teardrop, amphora, bulb, slim cylinder, tulip, bud vase, pillow, ribbed column, wavy rim, twisted spiral, ginger jar, carafe, lantern, bubble stack, faceted gem, organic pebble; for troughs straight, tapered, round ends) and textures (fine flutes, pinecone, stone, knit, low-poly, hexagon prisms, cube relief, diamond facets, teardrop scales, deep ribs, pleats, honeycomb, cable knit, basket weave and more) work together in any combination. New designs are added every month and marked New.

Texture depth sets how far a texture stands out (25 to 200 %); it always prints without supports. Textures with ribs, scales or cells have a count (how many round the pot); low-poly, hammered and bubbles have a pattern you can shuffle. The rim is a smooth lip band or the texture running on to the top: pleats and ribs follow the texture, the others get the band unless you choose.

Sizes

Each size fits a nursery pot as garden centres sell plants in, with 4 mm all round and 12 mm of water room below it:

• S: a 12 cm pot (10 cm high)
• M: a 14 cm pot (12 cm high)
• L: a 17 cm pot (14.5 cm high)
• XL: a 21 cm pot (18 cm high)

Every size, XL with its tray too, prints on a 256 x 256 mm bed. When pot and tray do not fit one bed together, the file has two plates and the queue prints them one after the other.

The drip tray

A trough's tray snaps on underneath instead: the trough goes on down into it as a narrower foot with a small ridge, cut in the same pieces as the trough.

Standing and wall pots can have a tray. It screws on underneath: a threaded post in the middle of the tray goes into the pot floor. Its outside continues the pot texture, so pot and tray read as one piece; screwed tight, the pattern lines up. A pot with a tray has drainage holes, so the water runs into the tray. Give the tray its own colour and it goes on its own filament in the file.

Hanging a wall pot, trough or pocket

• Print the wall plate that comes with it (in the same file; a trough has one per end pot). It is a rounded teardrop, 62 mm tall and 42 mm wide, 5.5 mm thick, with two slotted, countersunk screw holes.
• Hold it to the wall with the point up and mark the two holes. Use plugs and two countersunk screws (3.5 to 4 mm) that suit your wall. For a trough, space the plates as far apart as the loops on its back.
• Screw it on, level it in the slots, and tighten the screws so the heads sit below the surface.
• Lower the pot onto the plate from above: the loop on its back is open at the bottom, slides over the plate and centres itself on its round top. Lift it off again to water or repot.
• On an acoustic wood-slat panel, pick the slat-panel hook instead: set the gap between your slats, push its tongue into a gap and put one screw into the slat on each side.

Printing

Vase mode makes a vase or a plain standing pot solid for the slicer's spiral vase mode: one wall, no seam and much quicker. It prints on any printer and nozzle the slicer knows (Bambu Studio, or OrcaSlicer for other brands); the queue picks a printer with a 0.6 or 0.8 mm nozzle first when one is free, as a wider line is quicker and makes a stronger single wall. See Printing planters and vases that hold water for when vase mode holds water.

Every part prints standing up (the wall plate on its back, a slat hook on its face), without supports: the outside never leans out more than 45 degrees, the loop's channel top is pointed, the tray thread is gentle. Before a file is made the generator checks that every part is a closed solid, the nursery pot fits, the thread and channel have their play, nothing needs support and the wall is as thick as you set it (2.8 mm unless you change it). Pots without holes and vases have to hold water: see Printing planters and vases that hold water.

Products and your shop

Make a product makes one product with a variant for every size and colour you tick; each size is its own file. With the WooCommerce plugin (with a live preview) or the Shopify snippet, customers pick the kind, shape, texture, size, tray and colours themselves (and, where you tick them, troughs with their number of pots, the texture depth, the rim and how it hangs); the order is made and queued by itself.