No matter which 3D printer type you’ll use, the 3D model must be manifold. You’ll now have the Print3D toolbox active by scrolling in the left part of the screen (activate the ToolShelf by typing T if necessary). Don’t forget to save the new setting before moving on. If it’s not, type ‘print’ and the 3D Print Toolbox should be enabled as you see below. Go to File/User preferences/Addons and check whether the tool is enabled. Make sure the add-on 3D Print Toolbox is active. Import your file (File/Import/STL files) and save it as. Once you open Blender, a default cube will be visible.
It is available for Linux (my favorite!), Windows and Mac OSX. Here are the steps to make sure any CAD file is 3D printable.ĭownload Blender. For this tutorial, you can download my first model that I 3D printed: a flower vase. Most 3D printing services will display the type of format they want you to upload on their websites. And coming back to the topic here, Blender has a toolbox that greatly simplifies 3D printing final steps.ĬAD models come in many formats. Blender can have a steep learning curve because you have to rely on many shortcuts or hotkeys, but once you learn them, you can do a lot of interesting stuff with it. Its open-source philosophy and its easiness for modeling organic forms was just what I needed. It felt too mechanical and stiff to try new ideas. Needless to say, it never caught on with me. While in engineering school and later on my first engineering job, I learned CAD by trying out Catia and Solidworks tutorials. For a complete list, check out this Wikipedia article. If you are a complete newbie at this whole 3D printing stuff, this tutorial may save you the headaches I had while learning how to prepare a CAD model for 3D printing.ĬAD models come in many formats and they can be created in many different types of software. Worse, the file was a 3D reconstruction model out of several photos I took, which means it was probably full of holes and no 3D printer could work its magic on it. They sent it back to me and I didn’t really understand what was wrong with it. When I first tried to 3D print a CAD model, I made the mistake of sending the file ‘as is’ to a local 3D printing service.
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