Translucent/transparent material

[Baz88]

Hi guys,

I'm building my first 3d printed model and I have 3 issues which i'm struggling with if any of you could help. I've tried to attempt this several moths ago, but never got the chance to do it, as i was trying to make it too difficult, so i've simplified it and kept the essential pieces. I was initially going to hollow out certain parts and run electrical wiring through them, but that proved difficult to do.

1. So i'm 3d printing a shell shaped roof for a large model, however, i have a bit of an issue. The shell is made up triangular panels, most of which are fine to print, however, a few of them are translucent with a grey tinge to it. They need to be translucent because i will install led's inside which will light up form the inside.

I'm wondering if anybody can give me advice as to how i can achieve this outcome.

http://www.steel.com.au/~/media/Blue...att.ashx?w=640
http://www.steel.com.au/~/media/Blue...nna-snape.ashx

2. I have one other issue and that is, as you can see from the photos, there is a black strip which runs in-between each triangular panel. These lines i will need to hand paint somehow, however, all the panels are the same thickness, creating a smooth surface and hand painting perfectly straight lines will be near impossible therefore, i am thinking about raising each of the panels, creating an indent, similar to a box gutter(that's actually what it is in real life) so i can paint inside that indent and it gives me a guide to work with. What i'd like to know, is in order for this to work, how thick would i need to raise the panels so that the 3d printing machine will do it properly? the 3rd image shows what i'm talking about.

http://design100.com/downloads/mda/1...dium_LED-1.jpg

3. The third issue is the seating. I am 3d printing the slab of the grandstand which is essentially a stair. Now the seats need to be green and when viewed front on all you can see are the green backs of the seats, however, there is a difference between the grey of the slab and the green of the seats. I don't want to paint the the vertical portion of the slab green cause that would look a little strange because it would be a horizontal strip of green, and you won't necessarily get the depth or the separation of each individual seat, so i was thinking of a grey slab and green seats, however, i'd rather not print 30,000 individual seats, firstly because when scaled down the seats will be to small to print(about 300m @1:1, meaning about 1mm wide at the scale i'm printing) and i would need to paint every one of those if i modelled and then printed everything as it is in real life. Essentially i want it to look as close to the 1:1 scale as possible without cutting corners which will be noticeable. so i'm quite stuck on how to approach this..

https://c1.staticflickr.com/7/6025/5...1d698ca3_b.jpg
https://www.australiandesignreview.c...-stadium-2.jpg

I hope that made sense.

I'm not sure why, but i don't seem to be able to attach images, so i have pasted in links to the images.

Would really love some help.