Chapter 1. Designing Objects for 3D Printing
3D printing! It's big, it's exciting, and it's fun! It's so important that Microsoft made being 3D printing compatible a high priority for Windows 8.1. This book will help you get started in using Blender to make objects specifically for 3D printing. We will not recommend any particular printer or printing service. If you already have a 3D printer, you will know what you need to do for printing. If not, you'll probably be depending on someone else to do the actual printing and you'll need to know what they need from you, and what you need to keep in mind as you model in Blender.
In this chapter, we will look into general issues affecting 3D printing and give you a little 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 a game engine.
The following are the topics we'll be covering in this chapter:
Opportunities to use your 3D printer
How a 3D printer works
Modeling dimensions, tolerances, and file sizes
Controlling printing costs
What materials can I use in 3D printing?
What types of printers are there?
A tour of a 3D printing service
