Preface

You know that 3D printing is hot. You wouldn't have bought this book if you didn't. What I hope you will get from this book is an introduction to building a model in Blender so it will make a good object in a 3D printer.

This is fairly simple. Mostly, you need to know what information the 3D printer needs to make an object, what considerations you need to make when designing your object, and which techniques you can use to achieve your goals.

I have tried to avoid being printer-specific. 3D printing is in the phase where new printers are appearing every day. At some point, there will be a shakeout where the best printer makers prevail, but it's too early to guess which companies those will be. But among all kinds of printers, there are basic rules that will work with any printer, and you will learn how to tailor your objects for particular printers.

While I have worked to ensure that you could do each step demonstrated, I assume that you have a general knowledge of operating Blender, such as one would get from my book Blender 3D Basics, also available on the Packt website.

Let's get started!

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Designing Objects for 3D Printing, gives you a glimpse into the general issues affecting 3D printing and background on what is going on, so you understand why you may have to do things differently to make an object in Blender for 3D printing than you do for animation or the game engine.

Chapter 2, Measuring and Texturing Techniques for 3D Printing, explains how to prepare a file to be used in 3D printing. We will cover using the Ruler/Protractor tool to measure objects and some methods used in texturing the model.

Chapter 3, Making a Blender Model that's Ready to Print, explains how to make models that are watertight, manifold, and will print well.

Chapter 4, Making Strong, Light Objects with the Solidify Modifier, explains how to make an object strong and light using the Solidify modifier and how to clean up the model. You will also learn about doing precision modeling, dealing with overhangs, and finally you will learn how to export the completed file.

Appendix, contains links to good background material on 3D printing, 3D printing services, hobbyist-level 3D printers, industrial-level 3D printers, and Blender objects available on the web.

What you need for this book

Blender 2.67 or higher and a general understanding of standard modeling techniques, such as described in Blender 3D Basics.

Who this book is for

People who want to be able to build 3D printed objects using Blender to model the object(s).

Conventions

In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text are shown as follows: "Set the radius of the brush to about 25 and the strength to 1.0".

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "In the UV/Image Editor header, select Image".

Note

Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.

Tip

Tips and tricks appear like this.

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