logo-to-stl

Turn the geometric Makeability Lab logo (SVG) into a 3D-printable STL, with independent extrusion heights per region.

The "ML" mark is a tessellation of right triangles on a 72-unit grid — 16 form the L, 12 form the M wings, and 4 are black accent cutouts. This tool reads those triangles from the SVG and extrudes each into a prism at a height you control per region, including optional "semi-random" jitter. Because the triangles share edges and a common base plane, a slicer fuses them into a single printable object.

Why a script (and not Fusion/TinkerCad)

The geometry is exact and grid-aligned, so a small parametric script gives precise, reproducible height control that's tedious to reproduce by hand in a GUI — and it doubles as a teaching example of generative/parametric design. The core has no third-party dependencies: it parses the SVG with the standard library and writes a binary STL by hand.

The relief is a guaranteed three-tier layout — cutouts (low) < faceted M field < L (top) — with two printability guarantees:

• the L stands at least --l-salience mm above the entire M field, so it always reads clearly; and
• no two edge-adjacent M triangles share a height (neighbors differ by at least --min-step mm), so every internal seam shows.

Both come from the same idea: triangles meet edge-to-edge on an exact grid, so neighbors are found exactly (shared edge = two shared vertices). The M field is assigned discrete height levels by greedy graph-coloring (seeded-random within the constraint, so it stays "semi-random"); the L and cutouts are intentional flat plateaus. A verification pass re-checks every seam and prints the result under -v.

Quick start

# (optional) isolate, though the core needs no third-party packages
python3 -m venv .venv && source .venv/bin/activate

# generate stl/makeability-logo.stl with the defaults
python3 logo_to_stl.py svg/makeability-logo.svg -v

Open the resulting STL in any slicer (PrusaSlicer, Cura, Bambu Studio, OrcaSlicer).

Options

python3 logo_to_stl.py SVG [-o OUT] [--width-mm W] [--seed N] [--base-mm T] [-v]
                            [--min-step S] [--m-height H] [--m-jitter J]
                            [--black-height H] [--l-salience S]

Flag	Default	Meaning
svg	—	input SVG (positional)
-o, --output	stl/<name>.stl	output STL path
--width-mm	130	overall width in mm (scales x and y uniformly)
--seed	42	RNG seed for the level assignment (reproducible)
--base-mm	0	optional solid floor under the whole model
--min-step	1.0	min height difference between adjacent M triangles
--m-height	6	center height of the M field
--m-jitter	2.5	half-range of the M field around --m-height
--black-height	2.5	cutout plateau height (the low tier)
--l-salience	2.0	how far the L plateau clears the tallest M
-v, --verbose	off	print levels, L plateau, and neighbor-step checks

Examples:

# bolder steps and a more prominent L
python3 logo_to_stl.py svg/makeability-logo.svg --min-step 1.5 --l-salience 3 -v

# 100 mm wide on a 1.5 mm base plate
python3 logo_to_stl.py svg/makeability-logo.svg --width-mm 100 --base-mm 1.5

How regions are detected

Each triangle's region is read from the id of its nearest ancestor <g>:

• id contains Black → cutouts
• id starts with L_ → L
• id contains M_Inner_Fills → M

Other groups (outlines, construction helpers, duplicate color layers) and all <line>/<polyline>/<path> elements are ignored. See the module docstring in logo_to_stl.py for the full list of input assumptions.

Multi-color printing (Bambu AMS)

The colored artwork uses ~11 pastels + black — more than the four AMS slots on a single AMS unit — so the pastels are bucketed into three hue families + black (see SLOT_PALETTE in logo_to_stl_color.py; edit it to match your loaded filaments).

Pass a colored SVG as the color source; geometry still comes from the first SVG, and fills are matched to triangles by coordinate:

Color lives in a separate script, logo_to_stl_color.py, which reuses the same geometry, height model, and STL writer (so the relief is identical) and adds only the palette/slot logic:

python3 logo_to_stl_color.py svg/makeability-logo.svg \
    --colors svg/makeability-logo-color.svg -v

This writes one STL per slot, all sharing the same origin:

stl/makeability-logo.slot1-yellow-green.stl
stl/makeability-logo.slot2-pink-orange.stl
stl/makeability-logo.slot3-blue-purple.stl
stl/makeability-logo.slot4-black.stl

By default the L-center and the cutouts both go to slot 4 (black), giving the "colorful M, dark L" look. Use --l-slot N (on the color script) to move the L (e.g. to a light filament so it reads as negative space — you'd repurpose one pastel slot for it).

In Bambu Studio (X1 Carbon + AMS): import all four STLs at once; when asked, load them as parts of a single object (they line up exactly because they share an origin). Then assign each part an AMS filament via the object/part list. It slices as one multi-color print — no manual swaps. (The face-painting tool is the other route, but it's tedious for 32 precise triangles, so prefer the per-part method.) Filaments won't match these exact hexes; pick the nearest loaded colors.

Printing notes

• Output prints as one piece: triangles share edges and a z=0 base, so the slicer unions them. The mesh is not strictly watertight (prisms meet at coincident internal walls), which slicers handle fine. If you need a pristine single manifold (e.g. for STEP export or strict repair tools), run a boolean union in trimesh/Blender — see requirements-dev.txt.
• Defaults give a 130 × 87 × 8 mm model. Adjust --width-mm for your bed/use.

Roadmap

• Wordmark text. The svg/makeability-logo-with-text.svg file contains the "Makeability Lab" text as <path> outlines. Those are font curves with interior holes, which need bezier flattening + hole-aware triangulation — a different problem from the grid triangles, and finicky to print at logo scale. The mark is extruded today; text is intentionally out of scope for v1. A clean future approach: parse the paths into polygons-with-holes and extrude them as one flat layer via trimesh.creation.extrude_polygon.
• Optional STEP/3MF export.

Repo layout

logo-to-stl/
├── logo_to_stl.py            # single-color tool (stdlib only)
├── logo_to_stl_color.py      # multi-color AMS export (imports the core)
├── requirements.txt          # runtime deps (none) — notes only
├── requirements-dev.txt      # optional: trimesh for validation/preview
├── svg/
│   ├── makeability-logo.svg            # the ML mark (geometry source)
│   ├── makeability-logo-with-text.svg  # mark + wordmark paths
│   └── makeability-logo-color.svg      # per-triangle fills (color source)
├── stl/                      # generated output (a few samples committed)
├── LICENSE
└── README.md

License

MIT — see LICENSE.