Many ranking lists and forums suggest the likes of Blender or the Autodesk family. There is only so much that can be done to simplify it, and you need to put a lot of effort if you actually want to design something useful and reliable. If you want to step up your game though, the direction isn’t so clear. For (very) occasional usage and from a beginner’s perspective, this is a great tool: very intuitive yet surprisingly powerful, it only takes a couple of video tutorials to get started at a reasonable speed. My first experience was with Google SketchUp. Of course when I say myself I mean Google, and the question was more like “3D printing modeling software”. I posed myself the question: “Given a machine that can materialize (almost) any shape from thin air, what tool should I use to express said shape out of my mind?” Long story short, I had some ideas and requests for designs of practical usage, but I didn’t know where to start. There is a lot of cool stuff to print out there, but the purpose of a 3D printer should be to empower your creativity, not to be some mystery toy box. This article however is not about that part (there is an excellent compendium of all the quirks your settings can cause, and Thingiverse is a pleasure to navigate) it’s about what came next, when the excitement settled down and left room for some actual creative work.

The first couple of months was spent fiddling with the parameters, understanding the problems you can face and compiling a long list of stuff to print from Thingiverse.

A small model, built from a cheap kit (Anet A6, a little short of 200 euros).īeing a computer scientist/software developer/maker I was really excited for the new toy. Less than a year ago I got my hands on a 3D printer.

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