Ok, just to keep things interesting let’s take a quick look at some of the weirder tangents of 3D printing before we examine the process itself.
The Second Life phenomenon has already made it’s way back into the physical world, for a while now. Although now offline?, Fabjectory (site may be down) had been offering a service where you can have your Second Life avatar 3D printed so you could have little desktop version of your virtual self.

Image found via Michael Buckbee’s Fabjectory Flickr site
Design shop Schulze & Webb Ltd developed the Availabot as part of their 2006 graduate exhibition at the RCA
“Availabot is a physical representation of presence in Instant Messenger applications. Availabot plugs into your computer by USB, stands to attention when your chat buddy comes online, and falls down when they go away. It’s a presence-aware, peripheral-vision USB toy… and because the puppets are made in small numbers on a rapid-prototyping machine, it can look just like you.”

Now Ponoko people who do not yet have ready access to 3D printing technology need not miss out with Pepakura Designer paper folding software.

found via Export to World, a project created by Linda Kostowski and Sascha Pohflepp for Ars Electronica 2007. The Export to World site has a great tutorial on how to export your Second Life objects into the real world. Sorry fellow Mac people this is P.C. only and you will need to download Ogle and Pepakura to get this happening. But in the end you can fold your own paper version of your virtual object…..

This is stringing a long bow, but it opens doors to new ways of thinking of 3D fabrication. What if instead of sucking data out of Second Life you modeled a piece of jewelry in 3d software, exported to Pepakura, modified the file to send to Ponoko, and folded your material of choice?? (You Tube link to how to make your own plastic bender courtesy of Tap Plastics (with a great jingle)).

Speaking of DIY 3D solutions, in future posts we will also be taking a look at home made 3D printers like the Fabaroni, the 3D printing machine that constructs 3D models with pasta dough from MIT…

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via: abduzeedo.com: Using VectorMagic

Thanks to Ponoko user Sue for steering me this way to this cool online vectorization tool that changes bitmaps into vectors. VectorMagic, the result of a research project by James Diebel and Jacob Norda at Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, is a free online auto-tracer, converting bitmap images into vector art:

This tool can trace logos and photos, which could be incorporated into your 3D designs either as etchings/engravings, cut-outs or the actual shape. It’s received some pretty positive reviews from users familiar with comparable tools like Adobe Illustrator’s Live Trace and Inkscape’s Trace Bitmap. It seems to be quite easy to use, especially for those not so adept with graphic software. Bittbox gives it two thumbs up and shows some examples of images that have been vectorized. As does JTB World Blog and Geekfindr. Check it out and have a look at their samples and comparisons with the other tools.

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Dave ten Have, CEO and co-founder of Ponoko has written a post for us on his take on the EPS file format and it’s importance in regards to using Ponoko. We’ve had a few questions about it so I think this is really timely. Thanks Dave!

When choosing file formats it is a fine balance between utility, ubiquity and availability. The utility lies in the question about whether or not the file can do what you want. The ubiquity lies in how many other tools use the file format. The availability lies in the hoops you have to jump though to get access to the file format. When creating the Ponoko service we looked a bunch of formats and settled on EPS (PDF, SVG and DXF were the other contenders).

EPS is a good format in that it is well supported in a lot of our target tools and it is has the accuracy that we need to produce products for our end users. The downside is that it is a bit used and abused. In all our testing we’ve had a great success rate with EPS in generating an end result that our users are happy with. Furthermore we’re into the game of remixing industrial design and to do that we need a file format that can be easily shared, again EPS has done us proud in that process.

The only area where we’ve had problems is with the Adobe CS suite of tools. Illustrator is a great product which I have had a crush on for years. I used version 10 as part of my demo at TechCrunch. When Adobe released later versions of the product they did something to the EPS file format that made it readable in only Adobe products - essentially making the file impossible to read in tools like GhostScript. This is a sad state of affairs because there is a vibrant eco-system of tools that sit in this space and now there are EPS files that are more equal than others. Pragmatically, Adobe are free to do what they want with the EPS format - they own it, but it causes a little heart ache. The tools I love are not playing nicely.

What does this mean for Ponoko users?

Well it means that you need to be a bit selective about the tools you use to generate your EPS files. This is what we recommend (*):

- Adobe Illustrator version 10 and lower (generally be a little more paranoid and save the EPS file as version 8 )
- Corel Draw
- Inkscape (check out this commentary about using Inkscape with Ponoko)

The aim for Ponoko is support a broad base of tools (we don’t want to get into the tools game) and we’re working hard on a solution to the CS curve ball. I hope to be able to announce something in the next little while. The obvious question is whether or not we’d be supporting other file formats. The answer is ‘yes’, but it’s a big task and is something that will take a little time.

(*) Please feel free to make your own recommendations.

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We realize that many of you who are interested in designing custom-made items through Ponoko may not necessarily be experienced designers, or well versed in graphics software. In fact, it may scare off a few - but it really shouldn’t. As we’ve recently completed our first round of closed beta testing, there were quite a few non-technically inclined users - absolute beginners, to say the least with vector art software packages. They were able to produce some very unique and personalized products.

So, if you’re keen to create and design, here is a brief guide to the basics of graphic software that you’ll need to draw up your designs. While this is by no means a completely comprehensive guide, it’s a good start. I’ve included links to some other more substantial and detailed reviews of the standard graphics software out there.

Vector Program. What is it? Software program that allows you to draw and edit technical drawings, generating EPS files which is particularly important for Ponoko users as EPS files are needed to use the system.

Where can you find them? There are industry standard shrink-wrapped graphics suites you purchase with all sorts of bells and whistles to free, open-source programs you can find online.

Now, as I mentioned for your use with Ponoko, you’ll be able to use any vector program (packaged, online, licensed or open-source) that can generate an EPS file to upload onto our platform. The following is a list of some of the more popular vector editor programs that we’re familiar with:

CorelDRAW: CNet’s review gave CorelDraw Graphics Suite 3X an 8 out of 10, with the bottom line being: “a powerful and feature-rich bundle appropriate for home, business, and professional graphics”.

Adobe Illustrator: The review on this industry standard is that it’s the top of the line graphics program. Check About.com’s Adobe Illustrator Tutorials for Basics and Tools for a list of free online tutorials to help users.

Macromedia FreeHand/Adobe FreeHand MX: As of May 2007, Adobe is no longer continuing development for FreeHand. But for those who continue to use or have access to Freehand, user resources for tutorials, downloads, tips and help can be found here at About.com.

Inkscape: A free Linux based vector program was given 5 out of 5 and “Excellent” from Softpedia.com’s review.

Q-Cad: A multiplatform 2D CAD program that can be downloaded from download.com

Xara Xtreme: From About.com:

Xara Xtreme is a top-notch graphics tool, no matter what your level of graphics experience. With its amazing speed, small size, reasonable system requirements, moderate price, and powerful feature set, it’s hard to go wrong with Xara Xtreme. Although it’s currently only for Windows, Xara has announced plans to make Xtreme open source and to develop Macintosh and Linux versions.

Aviary (Raven Vector Editor): Yet to be released, but will be coming soon this year from Aviary (see earlier post). This free online tool is part of a design platform consisting of 13 other tools that can work together. To get updates on when these tools will be released check their blog.

Google Sketchup: This is pretty easy to use if you’ve never worked with 3D modelling before. Good for modeling such as woodworking projects. Google provides a lot of support through their Sketchup blog, with tutorial videos and podcasts available from Go-2-School. There’s a free version you can download as well as a pro version for $495.

UPDATE: The free version of Sketchup will NOT export .EPS format.

References and Reviews to check out:

Wikipedia “Comparison of vector graphics editors”

Designer-info.com: Vector Drawing

About.com: Vector Drawing Basics - Bezier Curves and Paths:

Wikipedia: “List of Vector Graphics Editors”

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