Applications of 3D printing - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Applications of 3D printing

📖 Scenario: You are creating an educational guide that lists common applications of 3D printing technology in everyday life and industry.

🎯 Goal: Build a structured list of 3D printing applications categorized by field, showing how 3D printing is used in each area.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a dictionary named applications with specific fields as keys and example uses as values

Add a variable highlight_field to select one field to focus on

Use a loop to create a new dictionary highlighted_applications containing only the selected field and its uses

Add a final key-value pair to applications summarizing the overall impact of 3D printing

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

3D printing is used in many industries to create custom parts, prototypes, and products quickly and affordably.

💼 Career

Understanding applications of 3D printing helps in roles like product design, manufacturing, healthcare innovation, and education.

1

Create the initial applications dictionary

Create a dictionary called applications with these exact entries: 'Medicine': ['Prosthetics', 'Surgical models'], 'Automotive': ['Custom parts', 'Prototyping'], 'Fashion': ['Jewelry', 'Footwear']

3D Printing

# Create the dictionary applications with the specified fields and uses
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use curly braces to create a dictionary and square brackets for the list of uses.

2

Add a highlight field variable

Add a variable called highlight_field and set it to the string 'Medicine' to select the field to focus on.

3D Printing

applications = {
    'Medicine': ['Prosthetics', 'Surgical models'],
    'Automotive': ['Custom parts', 'Prototyping'],
    'Fashion': ['Jewelry', 'Footwear']
}
# Add the highlight_field variable below
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Assign the string 'Medicine' to the variable highlight_field.

3

Create a dictionary with highlighted applications

Use a for loop with variables field and uses to iterate over applications.items(). Inside the loop, if field equals highlight_field, add that entry to a new dictionary called highlighted_applications.

3D Printing

applications = {
    'Medicine': ['Prosthetics', 'Surgical models'],
    'Automotive': ['Custom parts', 'Prototyping'],
    'Fashion': ['Jewelry', 'Footwear']
}
highlight_field = 'Medicine'
highlighted_applications = {}
# Use a for loop to add the highlighted field and its uses to highlighted_applications
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use an if statement inside the loop to check if the current field matches highlight_field.

4

Add a summary entry to applications

Add a new key-value pair to the applications dictionary with key 'Summary' and value '3D printing enables rapid prototyping and customization across industries.'

3D Printing

applications = {
    'Medicine': ['Prosthetics', 'Surgical models'],
    'Automotive': ['Custom parts', 'Prototyping'],
    'Fashion': ['Jewelry', 'Footwear']
}
highlight_field = 'Medicine'
highlighted_applications = {}
for field, uses in applications.items():
    if field == highlight_field:
        highlighted_applications[field] = uses
# Add the summary entry to applications below
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use the dictionary key assignment syntax to add the summary.