3D Printing Resources
3D Printing Resources
Information
Software
- Mendel Control
- GCODE generator
- 3D modeling
- Google Sketchup
- A Sketchup to STL solution
- Another Sketchup to STL plugin
- Sketchup is easy to get and easy to get going with, but there are a few tricks. Most important, though you can set measurements to millimeters (mm), you can't carry out all drawing operations using sub-mm dimensions. So design in meters (m), and after the unitless STL is created, tell the GCODE generator to assume that measurements are in mm. (Peter)
- OpenSCAD
- Blender
- Google Sketchup
- Miscellaneous
- Netfabb (fixes STL files)
- You can send your STL to be fixed on the cloud and emailed back, or you can download a free version of Netfabb Studio for local use
- Netfabb (fixes STL files)
Build instructions
How to use Guan's Prusa Mendel at Hack Manhattan
Visualizing and fixing
The STL format describes triangles in Euclidean space. The triangles should touch to form the surface of a 3D object. Some tools, especially Google Sketchup, generate STL files that have extra triangles inside or outside the object, which can lead to complaints by Slic3r and other tools that the object is not manifold.
netfabb Cloud is an online tool that can fix your STL files. You can upload your STL file and then download a fixed STL file, which you can then slice.
netfabb Cloud can be a bad choice if your STL file is particularly large, both because it has a hard time fixing large files and because it will take a long time to upload. Use the free desktop version, netfabb Studio Basic, instead. You must fix the object and then right-click the fixed version and export as STL.
netfabb Studio Basic will render your STL, but it is hard to navigate. MeshLab is a good tool for viewing and inspecting 3D models and making minor adjustments such as rotations.
