Terribly Rude, Sorry - Az Tuning In

Welcome!

There are a few things that Are pretty neat. I'm not sure what you've already got stuck into, but here goes anyway! There is heaps of info on each of these things all over the forum, and don't be afraid to ask questions!

For making new objects, I've used two apps, google sketchup and inventor fusion. Sketchup is great because it has a fairly shallow learning curve. Inventor has a bunch more features, but isn't quite as easy to get your head around. Sketchup needs a plugin to export to stl, inventor has it built in. Both apps are free for personal use, you might need to look into licensing for educational use though.

Solidoodle recommend using pronterface and skeinforge, but there are alternatives out there that are probably better for your use. Repetier host is great. It is a hell of a lot easier to get your head (and your students!) around, and integrates with both skeinforge and another slicer called slic3r. Slic3r is significantly quicker than skeinforge, so in a classroom situation, it'd be much better. Repetier host also let's you quickly switch between multiple slic3r settings, so you can easily have options for different layer heights, support settings etc. it will take a bit of setting up, but once it is going its great.

As far as general info goes, there is heaps on here, and there are both the official wiki and soliwiki to visit. If there was just one page you could read, for me it would be 'what should I not do?' On the official wiki. I'm pretty sure I've done each one of them before I found the page

Anyway, welcome to the community!

All good I used to be one of those IT guys at a school

Sketchup is good, especially for that kind of stuff.

They don't *have* to be changed, but you can vary the properties of the print - make them stronger or weaker by using more or less infill, more outer shells, thinner layers to increase the resolution of the print.

You can change all these things through skeinforge as well so you arent losing any functionality.

Glad to see someone else from AZ. I've been to a few 3D printing meetups around town, but you're the first person I've heard of with another Solidoodle. I got so excited when I saw your post because I've been thinking about taking my Solidoodle to a local school to see if I can get some kids excited about their future in a 3D printable world. I also happen to be a design student that's been playing around with all sorts of 3D modeling tools.

I work mostly on a mac and use Rhinoceros for most of my modeling (with a few other supplementary programs). I have to say that I think sketch-up is a god-awful tool that seems to only cause confusion for myself and my fellow students, but if you can get it to work for you, then more power to you (a few of my peers have actually created some amazing things with it, it's just not for me).

Give me a PM if you'd like to talk more. I'd be more than willing to help you troubleshoot any problems you may have setting your printer up, and if your school is convenient and approval can be had I'll even stop by with my Solidoodle.

Unfortunately, at our level of study no one is teaching us this software, everyone just teaches themselves. I moved to Rhino (and other programs) because of all of the frustrations I had with sketch-up. Having learned a lot about both programs, I just think sketch-up makes some things that are really intuitive in other programs difficult.

I think the biggest issue is that as graphic design students most of my peers are using 3D models to render whole exhibit spaces, not to make objects for printing. Sketch up doesn't seem to be able to do this well, especially not with organic forms. Unless I'm missing some huge features that are only available in the pro version or something.

But like I said, some of us are able to make some incredible things.

That being said, as pretenda mentioned sketch-up has a really easy learning curve and would be great if you are trying to teach students.