The basics for turning your ideas into 3D prints

Posted By Zach Correa on Jun 19, 2014 | 0 comments

Whether you’re a 3D design extraordinaire or someone with a great idea, its possible to get your vision printed through the Sculpteo website.

There are hundreds of possibilities to turn your idea into a physical object, here are just a few.

The best way to get exactly what you are looking for a 3D print is to design the object yourself. SketchUp and Blender are two of the best open sourced 3D design softwares out there, but if you’re looking for a more technical experience, AutoCAD and the Adobe Creative Cloud will get the job done. Designs created in one of those programs saved as .stl files can be uploaded directly to the Sculpteo website and printed within a few days.

If designing is not your knack, you could hire a free lance designer 3D designer or use one of the many online marketplaces that offer free 3D designs. Thingiverse is a free and very extensive marketplace that offers most things you could imagine. Grabcad, on the other hand, offers more technical designs (tools, car parts, etc.) with tens of thousands for free. Finally Turbosquid has many beautiful paid designs, which could be used for prints or 3D designs alone. Any of the files downloaded from these sites can be downloaded and uploaded to the Sculpteo website for printing.

Sculpteo also has its own 3D printing marketplace which offers a quick and easy way to print 3D designs without having to first update them. The marketplace offers a large number of objects but is not yet as extensive as some of the other websites out there.

Lastly and possibly the most exciting of 3D printing’s capabilities is 3D scanning. With digital scanners and 3D printers it is possible to recreate a copy of anything in model form. High tech scanners now have the ability to record both the color size and shape of just about anything, 3D printing then offers the ability to recreate a nearly exact model of the object.

Printing extremely elaborate objects has become quicker and easier than ever, and nothing should hold you back from arriving at the object you’re looking for.

*Also be sure to check out the 3D design work by the talented Adam Beamish!