Is this the right printer for me?

[DarthCrucias]

hahaha aardvark. i will definitely do that with the more generic things. i was more thinking of logos for the popular things. such as maybe the mockingjay symbol made into a pin or pendant. im sure theres no way i could do that genericly, so i would likely need to contact the author of the books or producer of the movies.

[curious aardvark]

Good luck - but I think they'll all say no.

[Geoff]

Do you want to spend more time printing and designing or more time tweaking and fussing?

A 100-300 machine is going to have you doing the latter more, spend more like $600-$1000.. The Printerbot Metal would be an exception, that is actually a pretty solid little unit.

As far as designing things, if you want something that's free and has a massive support base (and a million youtube tutorial videos) try Blender (blender.org) A little odd at first but if you want a good program that is a mix between being nerdy like openScad, and one that's noob friiendly like zbrush, Blender is a great choice, the only thing it doesn't do is repair meshes but that's what netfabb is for.

[Keldor]

I use Blender for 3D modeling for printing. It does have an add-on for checking your meshes called Print3D. All you have to do is go into the preferences and click a box.

Once you do a few tutorials about the Interface and how to model, I think it is pretty easy to use. The interface is very customizable, which is intimidating at first, but the flexibility is great once you get comfortable.

Its default settings are for animation. Blender is a versatile tool.

Blender is also able to be used to precisely model things to the size you want, but you have to do some set up first. I had to figure most of this out on my own, so I will give you a brief explanation of how I get started.

Go into a Properties panel, scroll down to the units section and click on Metric or Imperial. Then to get the scaling right set the scale to 0.001. In your 3D view, you will probably have to change the clipping to be able to see your model. That's all you really have to do to start modeling for 3D printing in blender.

[3dspider]

Blender's default ui is pretty horrible, if you are used to 2D design... At least it's customizable, but the documentation on what everything does is pretty much nonexistent. It took me the better part of 2 hours to get the ui customized to where I could do basic things, like scroll around the object, and move the object with my touchpad. I tried it out in 1996, and again in 2004 and again in 2013... It's come a long way, but most of the functions seem to be for animating. It would be nice if it had a 3D printing mode where all those extraneous things (camera angles, frames, light sources, etc) went away.

[quertz]

I also use Blender for my 3D-Models and I have to admit that sometimes it is really annoying to get some stuff to work...
When I build up my Object from multiple meshes and try to do some boolean operations to join them I often get an error (It seams that BoolOPs dont like to join two Objects with partially the same faces...)

Probably you could say it like this:

When you're trying to make "mathematical correct" Objects use something like OpenScad
When you're looking for natural forms like humans etc... Blender ist probably your way to go. (Thanks to the Sculpt mode)

BTW:
Usually the first step after creating a project in Blender: A -> Entf -> Enter (Delete Everything); then start adding (SHIFT A)
Also probably a nice feature for working with meshes: 3D-View -> right Settings panel (Click small + on right Edge if not visible) -> Display -> Ambient Occlusion (only available in latest version)

[iDig3Dprinting]

Blender's default ui is pretty horrible, if you are used to 2D design... At least it's customizable, but the documentation on what everything does is pretty much nonexistent. It took me the better part of 2 hours to get the ui customized to where I could do basic things, like scroll around the object, and move the object with my touchpad. I tried it out in 1996, and again in 2004 and again in 2013... It's come a long way, but most of the functions seem to be for animating. It would be nice if it had a 3D printing mode where all those extraneous things (camera angles, frames, light sources, etc) went away.

Blender is very powerful but it is a nightmare. Trying to find the right function or part of the interface can be difficult. Its very easy to get lost in its UI.

[Chayat]

I like http://www.wings3d.com/ it's a very natural feeling modeler. I export to Blender to scale to the right size and do any bool functions.