[errantspark]

Designing and printing a 3D object is fundamentally much more complex than typing out an essay and hitting print. There's always going to be a big learning curve for someone trying to get into 3D printing/modelling for the first time. There's no way to get around that, it's especially hard for people who do not have a lot of spatial reasoning experience.

The most important point in the article, and I think the most valuable potential feature of new 3D printing oriented design software is this:

Communication of 3D printing limitations to the user at design time

For someone experienced with 3D printing (someone who's messed up a few prints and thought about why) it's easy to see why certain features are unlikely to print correctly because they have had the opportunity to build a mental model of the 3D printing process in their head. Helping people build up this mental model quicker, especially without having to actually print and iterate physically is invaluable to being able to efficiently design 3D parts.

[loopbit]

For basic things like model checking, I'd recommend NetFabb model checker[0] and/or uploading the file to Shapeways[1].

The first will try to do basic model checking and close any holes it finds. Shapeways uploading process will go into much more detail, trying to find areas that might be too thin for the printer to print, or too close together...

Also, I long for the day where other 3D printing technologies reach the general public. FDM (the process all makerbots and clones use) is fine, but the quality is not as goood as it could be and things like support material are a necessity when doing complex pieces.

BTW, just in case anyone needs this, a great program to convert a 3D model to gcode is Cura[2].

[0] https://netfabb.azurewebsites.net/ [1] http://www.shapeways.com/ [2] https://ultimaker.com/en/products/software

[minthd]

I wonder if a simple way to teach people what are "printable" models is to build a library of good and bad examples , showing them some examples , and testing them on other examples whether they are good and why - while giving feedback after such example.

This should work because the brain is great at pattern recognition.

Have this been done before ?