Right so I took the plunge and ordered a copy through shapeways, and it arrived today!
It's a very cool feeling holding the end result in your hands, and the fact that I drew this on a computer and now it's here in reality just puts it on a whole other geeky level for me. I suspect that I might be looking on it with a parents eyes as although I know there are some obvious problems I'm still chuffed to bits with it, especially as it's my first model.
I've taken some pics but as the model is so translucent it's pretty difficult, I tried to wash it with some badab black to bring out some definition but that didn't work so well either.
And a shot with all the plug in bits removed
There's probably a few other angles
here if anybodies interested
If I was to do it again I'd definitely use bigger rivets as mine were too small (0.2mm diameter, 0.1mm high) and I can only just see them, review the thickness of the stabilisers and probably try and make the whole thing a little less square looking.
Also I'd follow this advice I found in one of Stingray's old threads, particualy about building at a far bigger scale and minimising at the end.
Stingray wrote:
Stuff thats good to know;
Its important to work in sketchup at way above mm scale (i go for 1000x the end size). Sketchup has a bunch of weird bugs the make stuff vanish if you work at scales under 1mm. Scale down only at very end.
Watertightness of models (also known as being closed or manifold) is crucial. I found the following 2 sketchup plugins useful for this;
Solid Inspector:
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?t=30504CADspan (free version):
http://www.cadspan.com/toolsIts probably best to merge all your separate geometry into a single mesh when you export (using 'Outer Shell' or 'Union') but I found this to be incredibly tedious and mostly unnecessary. I saved merging for cases where the preview of the uploaded model looked screwy.
These are the rough steps i follow to get finished model printed;
Check watertightness (probably best to check this regularly during model creation)
Explode all groups and components - more bugs cause the exported models scale to be completely wrong unless its exploded completely before export
Scale down to correct size
Probably want to verify watertightness again
Export in Collada file format (you can also compress it in a zip file for a faster upload)
Upload to shapeways and make sure the 'fix problems'(called something like that) check box is checked. If post upload fixing fails, do some merging/tweaking and try again
Once uploaded go into your 'my designs' area and inspect the uploaded & fixed model with the in browser 3d model viewer. if you see anything screwy then correct/tweak your geometry on your sketchup model, export and upload again
And finally when it all looks good submit for print! (and find something else to keep you busy for several weeks while you wait for it to arrive)
Hope that helps.
It'd be great to hear your thoughts, what you like and what I could do better?
