Adam, if you read this – the latest RepG is AMAZING. Getting to preview an STL, convert to GCode, and then to an S3G file all from the comfort of the friendly RepG UI is fantastic!
It’s not that I’m scared of the Skeinforge UI or anything.
It’s just that it stalks me while I sleep, steals my happy innocent dreams, and replaces them with a theater of shadow puppet parade of horrors.
As I’ve mentioned before, I do all of my 3D modeling in Sketchup. It’s not open source, but it is free.1
Well, I’ve been monitoring the Capolight Electronics Blog lately – and it’s a good thing too. Besides having some seriously amazing information about the thermal properties of plastic, he’s just posted about some useful importing/exporting plugins for Sketchup. As easy as Sketchup is to use, it’s just not very good at exporting to STL. I haven’t tried these plugins out – but I’m hopeful they will do the job.
If you try them out, please let me know how it goes!
I don’t have killer 3D modeling skills – but am able to build a reasonable model using Sketchup. It may be closed-source, but it’s got a fantastic UI. (Heck, Apple has made an entire business model out of this proposition).
I’m trying to design a printable nut and bolt – and have a pretty good design. The diameter of the threads on the bolt is almost 1cm, so it’s pretty large. Constructing spirals manually is a real pain, so I used a plugin/script for generating the internal and external helixes. (Helixi?)
The difficulty with Sketchup is that it’s not really a 3D modeling program – it’s a sketching program that makes really good looking images and reasonably good 3D models. The problem is that it doesn’t really check to make sure triangles are properly oriented, sides are facing the way they should be, or that it is manifold. Oh, and when the model is small it will start making little holes in your object.
There are plugins for exporting Sketchup files to STL files, but either due to a flaw in Sketchup or the plugins, they results are not as good as what you would find in other programs. The end result is that to get a really good STL out of Sketchup I have to design in Sketchup, export as a 3DS model, import into Blender or NetFabb, fix it up, and then export back to a fixed STL.
If you’ve got a better way for transmuting a Sketchup file into a reliable STL, please let me know!
Some people have suggested MakerBot is somehow stealing thunder from the RepRap project. 1 Here’s a super simple way every MakerBot sold could, in a very small way, help the RepRap project.
Why not put a copy of every Mendel part as an STL on the SD card that comes with the MakerBot? Actually, why not put Spacexula’s set of Mendel production STL’s?
This is a cheap and fast way to disseminate plans for RepRap files to people who are actually capable of making them.
To my thinking there’s basically two optimal RepRap sizes (in terms of build area):
Random tangent: wouldn’t it be cool if all RepRaps came with the designs for their own printed parts already on board? Just fire it up for the first time, calibrate, and start printing replacement parts. (I realize this isn’t quite feasible – in order to be ready-printable the files would need to be in S3G format and the machine would have to run the STL’s through it’s own Skeinforge settings).
I printed up my first Beco Block today – and I can’t wait to print up more. Nate True was kind enough to download the STL files, center, align, save, and zip all of the various pieces. 1
I’d like to see a new STL file out there that has several different types of these Beco Blocks all on one sheet (similar to Spacexula‘s Mendel production STL files). I could really see myself cranking out these by the dozens. In fact… once I had a sheet designed with a good mix of the various parts I could put it through the MakeNBreak script to churn them out.
I designed this in Sketchup, exported to STL, Skienforged to gcode, RepG’d to an S3G file, and printed. The feature I’m the most proud of is the pendulum inside his chest.
Digital Cogsworth
Physical Cogsworth
The design needs to be tweaked a little since parts of him have too much plastic and a few parts have too little. But, overall I’m quite happy with the result.
It was going pretty well, actually.
The fact that it’s not yet a USB plug-n-play system kinda scared him off. 1 I’m confident we’ll get there some day. And, even if we don’t, I’m still having a hell of a time.
I cannot take credit for these fantastic plugins. Since posting this originally I have heavily edited it to include all the great Google Sketchup plugins I’m using. 1 Without further ado they are: