Tips for sketchup/3d printing

[Team Orr]

Hey,
So im thinking of jumping onto the bandwagon with this whole "shapeways" malarkey, the only problem is that i am rubbish at sketchup/CAD and have no clue on how to go about designing a antweight to scale, if anybody can lend me some advise/tips it would be greatly appreciated

[earthwormjim]

I had the day off yesterday,and thought I'd give it a go for the first time.
Download sketchup,look at the first video tutorial,which I think is 3 mins.
And from there you can fiddle around with it.
It is about moving around and zooming in and out.Once you can move the object infront of you,co can add stuff to it.
I found it very clever.You just draw a circle or square,then "pull" the shape into a 3d object.
On my second attempt,My wheel took maybe an hour?

Cant wait for the delivery from shapeways,its exciting!!
Go for it. Cheers Jim.

[Team Orr]

Hey
i have been messing around with it a bit and its looking okayish, but how you guys produce all that snazzy stuff for shapeways is still a mystery to me! i can make shapes 3d/build a chassis etc but when i try to put a hole in the center of a wheel for the shaft of a motor im 99.9% sure its not perfectly in the middle and how do you guys get a model all prepared for 3d printing? i just want i base with holes for the wheels (which should be there in the printing) and holes for mounting components/armor. but i think it may be beyond me
oh and you can get gearmotor models for the robot in the google import thing :O

[earthwormjim]

You should be able to get the centre spot of any circle.I go to an endpoint of the face I want to get the central point of,and then go to where I think the centre is,and the point should snap to a blue circle that says centre,(I think holding the shift key,keeps it on the same face?).It can take a few goes. Also,as a beginner too,use the tape measure tool to check distances,it helps alot.and measure everything twice,if not three times.

[Team Orr]

What do you guys think of this?
http://tinkercad.com/
im hopefully going to get myself a Makerbot soon so any tools that make the process of printing easier has to be good

[Anoptimistprime]

oh and you can get gearmotor models for the robot in the google import thing :O

oh really? whats the link?

[earthwormjim]

you can search for gearmotor in google warehouse and it comes up as the first entry.
Here is the link anyway...http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/ ... revstart=0

[Anoptimistprime]

Nice one it's perfect saves me the effort of designing it myself like I did with a servo so I could work on a fleaweight

[Team Orr]

so what do you think of the CAD software? ^^^
apparently it prints direct to the makebot in STL! and Shapeways seem to like it too...

[Anoptimistprime]

I like sketch up as its easy and simple and I haven't tried the other one mentioned
Seen as the sketch up has a database with loads of item easily accessible I like sketch up even though the other mentioned probably has the same kind of thing but I have yet to try it