So, you read our previous photo tutorial, and now you have a photo light box and/or a nice clip-on macro lens or whatnot, and your photos are so good they almost look like renders. The only problem is, now your photos look like renders! But your photos need to do more than just look pretty; they also need to show that your design can be printed successfully... // Column at Shapeways

There are lots of ways to go from a 2D image to a 3D model, but one of the easiest ways is with the Shapeways 3D Printed Pendant Creator -- even if you aren't technically making a pendant. This Tutorial Tuesday, we’ll take you through the creation of a simple design with the Pendant Creator, including ways to tweak your image graphic so that it works well with the Pendant Creator tool... // Column at Shapeways

Happy Fourth of July! Today we’ll take it easy with a look at 3D design with BlocksCAD, an accessible block-based CAD programming tool that you can work with online in your browser. BlocksCAD works much like the popular intro-to-code language Scratch, but instead of creating animations, it is designed for creating 3D models. The fastest way to learn is by watching BlocksCAD in action... // Column at Shapeways

Sometimes you just want a little piece of Earth to call your own. For example, here’s a Porcelain Ceramic relief map of the Shenandoah Valley region around Harrisonburg, Virginia. But where do you get the map data? There is a lot of it online, but not all of it is suitable for 3D printing or easy to export. Here’s where the website Terrain2STL comes to the rescue... // Column at Shapeways

Autodesk discontinued 123D Catch in January as part of a transition to their more extensive photogrammetry software ReMake, leaving many educators, students, and amateurs without an easy pathway for making quick, simple scans. Enter Trnio, a new iPhone app that guides you through the process of taking photos of an object, then stitches those photos together to create a 3D printable scan... // Column at Shapeways

How early can kids learn to create 3D printable designs? As soon as they can use an iPad, if they’re using Morphi, a friendly and powerful 3D design app. Morphi removes all the fiddly barriers to designing in a classroom: How does a student get a picture and send it to the computer? How do you convert an online image to SVG format? What if the internet goes down? Not a problem any more... // Column at Shapeways

If you already know something about photography or if you have a nice camera, then this post isn’t for you. Today’s tutorial is for people like me, who needed an easy way to make their phone photos a little bit better and don’t want to break the bank doing it. And as an excuse to photograph for detail, we'll check out some test prints from the new HP MultiJet Fusion 3D Printer... // Column at Shapeways

For an amateur 3D designer, how to wrap something around another thing is one of those questions that you know must have an answer but seems impossible to figure out. It comes up so often, in fact, that we’re going to devote this post to answering using Grasshopper. And we’re going to give you the code so you can wrap your own things around other things. // Column at Shapeways

Why create just one design when you can create infinitely many? Instead of designing a ring in just one size, you could use parametric design to control the ring size or the surface pattern, effectively creating many designs within one. Parameters also enable you to create algorithmic, generative designs with amazing complexity. This week we'll learn how to get started with Grasshopper... // Column at Shapeways

SketchUp is a natural software choice for bringing architecture to life in 3D. But did you know you can use it to make much more than buildings? If you’re looking for free, reliable software that is easy to start using and also has the teeth for more advanced projects, SketchUp might be the tool you seek. This week we’ll run down the best beginner and intermediate resources for SketchUp... // Column at Shapeways

The Perko Pair is a famous pair of knots that for a long time were thought to be different, but later were famously revealed to be the same by Kenneth Perko in 1973. We created a stylized morph between "Perko A" and "Perko B" by exporting a model from KnotPlot and then adding extrusions to each mesh face in TopMod, then printed the model with an Ultimaker 3 using dissolvable PVA supports... // Hacktastic

3D printing and digital fabrication efforts are happening at hundreds of institutions around the United States. The thing is, there’s often just one faculty or staff member leading the 3D effort, working alone. If you’re lucky, maybe you’re part of a small team. What happens when you put hundreds of those leaders in the same place? We found out at Construct3D at Duke University last weekend!... // Guest post at Shapeways

Math has the best bling. Structure, form, geometry, and symmetry are secret keys to beautiful 3D designs. For example, this stunning Rhombic star earring by Mathematical Creations was created with Wolfram’s powerful software Mathematica. Mathematica 11 added a suite of new 3D printing features including 3D mesh utilities, ready-made 3D printable models, and new tools for thickening models... // Column at Shapeways

Are you a beginner 3D designer, looking to take the next step after Tinkercad? The good news is, the next thing you’ll learn will make you capable of designing almost anything. The not-as-good news? Since Autodesk retired 123 Design (and Catch, and Make, and Sculpt, gasp!), you now have to take a slightly steeper step to get to the next level. Autodesk recommends taking that step to Fusion 360... // Column for Shapeways

It makes perfect sense that you can make your 3D prints cheaper by scaling them down to a smaller size. But, did you know that sometimes you can make your prints cheaper by making them… bigger?? There are three ways of measuring size that are important when printing with Strong & Flexible nylon plastic at Shapeways: Scale, Volume, and Space, and it's "Space" that makes the difference... // Column at Shapeways

Way back in our second Tutorial Tuesday we discussed tutorials for exporting multicolor digital models for 3D printing. But, that assumed you had a multicolor model in the first place. What if you want to add color to some plain old STL files? This week, we’ll walk you through a super simple way to paint color onto STL files with Meshmixer, using our "Perko Morph" model as an example... // Column at Shapeways

If you’re 3D printing models you've designed yourself, then you can pick exactly the right size and style you want. But if you’re selling 3D prints to the general public then you might want to provide multiple size and style options within one model. With "variants" you can combine multiple design files into one product listing so that you can offer multiple sizes or styles of your design... // Column at Shapeways

Do you want to make beautiful 3D-printable sculptures, jewelry, and lamps? It’s easier than you might think — if you know how to use TopMod. TopMod is a really unique tool to have in your 3D printing toolbox. It specializes in remeshing, wireframing, stellating, and modifying object meshes, and by combining those powerful functions you can quickly create stunning 3D-printable works of art... // Column at Shapeways

Cinema 4D is a powerful, professional modeling program that can be used for 3D animations, motion graphics, and 3D effects. It’s also fairly intuitive, and can be used to create and export models suitable for 3D printing. This post will help you figure out how to prepare C4D models for exporting to STL or VRML format for 3D printing, but for those new to C4D we'll start with some beginner tutorials... // Column at Shapeways

Some models are really, really difficult to print on an FDM printer, and “Fidget Cubes” are among the worst, with enclosed hinges and pieces that have to somehow print floating above other things. We’ll track the evolution of this fidgety design over the past five years, from an assembly model to print-in-place, multicolor variants, and finally a fully-functioning Yoshimoto cube... // Guest post at Shapeways