April 28, 2013

Open-source 3D creation suite Blender has released the first Release Candidate of Blender 2.67. Major improvements are the inclusion of FreeStyle, subsurface scattering for Cycles, optimizations in the motion tracker and the new 3D printing toolkit.

The new 3D printing toolkit is a collection of useful tools including statistics, error checking, cleanup and export, to make it easier to export models for 3D printing.

Statistics: The volume of the mesh and the combined area of all faces are calculated.

Checks: models are checked for common errors such as self-intersections, distorted faces, or walls and sharp area that are too thin to be printed, or steeply overhanging to print safely.

example of intersecting meshes

Twisted faces often distort

Example mesh with thin areas

Example of overhanging faces that exceed 45 degrees

Clean: isolated faces, edges vertices and distorted faces are removed before the model is exported for 3D printing.

Export: You can store an output directory for your model and export it without having to go to the file selector each time.

Blender 2.67 can be downloaded from the Blender Buildbot.

To help everyone who is into 3D printing, Blender has also released a 3+ hours Training DVD introducing Blender modeling for new users.

It then handles all topics you need to know for efficient and good quality 3D prints, including color, wall thickness or overhang problems. You will also find printable models to experiment with yourself.

This DVD has been put together by Dutch artist Dolf Veenvliet who has been exploring 3D printing for sculpture design for many years. Dolf Veenvliet owns a MakerBot printer, and a big fan of anything open and sharing.

The DVD sells for €27.00, but you can get a 10% pre-order discount:

get 10% discount ordering before May 8, when the DVDs are ready for reproduction. It then will also be available for paid orders as a download at the bottom of this page. Shipping will start May 14th.

 

Posted in 3D Software

 

 

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