Abstract
3D printing is a very promising tool for teaching aids manufacturing. These aids can better reflect the teachers' teaching aims than aids available commercially, in addition to that, the spectrum of aids can be wider.
Nowadays, the price of the technology is in many cases at acceptable level and Czech teachers can have 3D printer at their school. Nevertheless, the number of didactic models of teaching aids for 3D printing is still limited and preparation of new models is often behind teachers' possibilities.
With respect to that, in this contribution, a possible, parametric, approach for relatively simple 3D models design and generation is suggested and discussed. The models which benefit well from this method are 3D periodic table, which is very illustrative tool for demonstration of differences in properties among various elements in periodic system, and models for teaching VSEPR.
Both of these models were prepared using CAD-like openSCAD freeware program using parametric generation of the models with possibility to simply export and change for example height of the column (3D periodic table) or atom radii, bond length etc. in the VSEPR model. This approach allows to generate and print relatively high number of various models of 3D periodic tables and VSEPR models.
These models were distributed among Czech teachers and uploaded to often used www.thingverse.com database, where they are available for teachers (users) to print and employ in their teaching lessons.