3

I saw this 3D printing plugin lately, but I have never printed anything with Blender. Do you have any experiences with this?

https://i.materialise.com/blog/blender-3d-printing-plugin

Cheers, Lythna

Lythna
  • 31
  • 1
  • 2
  • From what I understand in 3d printing world, is that you will need to know the file format which you will need to print from. If any 3d packages have them, it will be up to you to make sure your model does not have non manifold objects. Blender will not affect the outcome of your 3d print ... rather the quality of the 3d file - (Usually stl format) - you supply to the 3d printer will. If I am not mistaken the link you posted is pretty much a proprietary plugin that would only work with the supplier of the 3d printing services they provide. – hawkenfox Jan 22 '16 at 15:02
  • 4
    Hi! Welcome to Blender StackExchange! This is a bit too opinion based. Many people will have very different experiences based off of their different printers, the plastics they used, how they model, etc. These types of questions just don't work well for this format. I recommend that you either narrow down your question so that it's not going to give opinionated responses, or try going somewhere like BlenderArtists.org and getting help there. I hope you find what you're looking for! – TARDIS Maker Jan 22 '16 at 15:54
  • Its a lot better than things like SketchUp (which generates lots of random points etc which really confuse printer), as you can edit each vertex if needed. However other programs designed specially for 3D printing would may be better - e.g. testing printing support material or something – Wilf Jun 04 '16 at 19:55

2 Answers2

3

Like many many others I do models for 3d print with blender. When creating models for 3d print you have to be aware of the limitations of the 3d printer and of the material you're going to print. What software you use to create your model is almost entirely a question of preference. One advantage of blender is that it offers a wide range of tools for modeling which you can all use or combine to create the perfect shape for your 3d-printed object. Shapeways has a nice guide for using blender: https://www.shapeways.com/creator/blender which you might find useful.

coCoKNIght
  • 884
  • 1
  • 6
  • 12
1

Although I've only had an initial play with using Blender for modelling objects for 3D printing, I found that even with simple shapes I ended up with so many geometry problems (found with the included 3D print add-in - http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.6/Py/Scripts/Modeling/PrintToolbox) that I'd have had to spend a lot of time fixing. There are lots of examples around of people who use Blender for 3D Printing successfully, and there are more and more tools for import/export/cleanup (for the latter look at https://makeprintable.com/ for example), so maybe it was just my methodology or certain operations that caused me problems (I was scripting everything so it wasn't shaky mouse problems...).

I'd recommend checking regularly as you build models to spot any problems before you get too far using either the built in toolbox or the imaterialise one you found (others add-ins, separate tools, an webbased alternatives are also available).

richardaeiou
  • 11
  • 2