3DPrinting

There are a lot of makers who really like SketchUp’s approach to 3D modeling. Personally, I think it’s a great way to get kids hooked on the idea of designing physical shapes that they may or may not fabricate with the laser cutter or 3D printer. While it may take a bit to get the hang of scale and accuracy, once you have these habits, your designs are repeatable with a variety of CNC tools and many different materials.

By looking about on Thingiverse and in the MAKE Flickr pool, you can see that Sketchup is a fairly popular tool for many of us who like to bring our ideas onto this side of the computer screen. The Make Ideas Real with SketchUp project is looking for examples of things that have been designed with SketchUp and brought into the world. The folks at SketchUp are gathering stories with the Make Ideas Real project about how people are using the program to design the things they make.