3D design gives you the freedom to easily add depth and dimension to your biggest ideas. Knowing how to design files correctly helps you bring ideas to life faster. When you have accurate 3D design files from the start, it’s easier to assess your design work and discover ways to improve upon your ideas. When it comes to creating and downloading 3D files, there are lots of free programs, methods, and options to choose from. To help you choose which methods will work best for you, we present two free 3D design webinars hosted by Drew Lentz, a 3D design expert on the MakerBot Learning Team.

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By Taiei Harimoto, Product Design Manager at Proximity Designs

Farming is backbreaking work, and farming in Myanmar can be especially hard due to the country’s low annual incomes (around $600 USD), poor infrastructure and access to quality tools. As a designer at Proximity Designs, a Yangon based social enterprise that’s innovating high-quality farming equipment to serve the country’s agrarian economy, I’ve seen these challenges first hand.

Like the farmers we support, Proximity Designs has a tough job. We need to keep manufacturing costs low, but up until recently had to rely extensively on metal machining for prototyping — which is slow and expensive. In late 2015, we learned about MakerBot from a former design fellow of the firm, Zachary Gould, and reached out to learn more and see if a 3D printer could address some of the prototyping challenges in our product development cycle. They donated a printer to observe the impact it could have on engineering challenges in the field.

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At MakerBot, we believe the easier the user experience, the more you can focus on developing your ideas. Whether you’re already 3D printing or just starting out, learning how to read, write, and talk about your process with the right terms can help you advance your goals. The 3D Printing Terminology Guide is a valuable resource from MakerBot that can help you bring ideas to life through a deeper understanding of desktop 3D printing.

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Earlier in March, MakerBot held a panel about teaching startup culture in schools at SXSWedu 2016. We’re excited to have been placed on the Panel Picker to return to SXSWedu 2017, but need your vote to get us there.

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Pictured left to right: Johan Till-Broer, Deanne Bell, Sreyash Sreyash and Kyle Corrette. Photo credit: Harry Sreyash

Back in April, we announced MakerBot’s participation in the Star Trek Replicator Challenge, a 3D printing challenge developed by Future Engineers that was calling upon the STEM skills of K-12 students. Cosponsored by NASA, Star Trek, and the ASME Foundation, the challenge required students to design a 3D model to assist astronauts with growing, storing, eating, or disposing of food.

Among the 400 entries that spanned over 30 states, the two winning designs, the Melanized Fungarium and Astro Martian Mini Farm, were picked from expert judges and could one day end up in space. The two students that designed them received a trip to New York City to tour the Space Shuttle Enterprise at the Intrepid Space and Air Museum. They finished their day with a VIP tour of MakerBot headquarters and met with senior engineers and key leadership.

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This summer, leaders from 11 MakerBot Innovation Centers gathered at our Brooklyn headquarters for what proved to be a momentous founder’s summit. For two days—June 23rd and June 24th—attendees exchanged best practices, worked through collective challenges, and presented uses cases from their MakerBot Innovation Center.

As leading universities around the world continue to implement MakerBot Innovation Centers, these large-scale 3D printing installations will further elevate access, entrepreneurship, and multi-disciplinary collaboration on campus.

Through this first summit, we are addressing the wider needs of our customers by expanding the community around our products. As the first of many to come, the summit gives MakerBot Innovation Center leaders a platform where exchanging best practices is about more than a smoother experience or just ironing-out kinks. Together, we are creating a community that is striving for a more ideal model of integrated desktop 3D printing in Higher Education so that tomorrow’s leaders and graduates can gain real world experience iterating, win jobs, and make a real economic impact for their universities, cities, and regions.

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Every school deserves access to quality resources for its students. Every student should have the chance to learn, explore, and grow with the best resources available. After frequent talks with educators and other customers, we’ve learned that 3D design apps are extremely valuable for the learning process. These 3D design apps, best explored on laptops, desktops, or iPads, help students conceptualize, shape, and model designs for new projects. Read on to check out MakerBot’s top five free 3D design apps that will help elevate learning in your classroom.

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Schools currently using MakerBot 3D Printers

Founded and headquartered in Brooklyn, MakerBot has always had a strong foothold in East Coast markets. When it comes to the countless businesses and schools throughout the United States that use MakerBot Desktop 3D Printers, many are on the East Coast.

Today MakerBot is proud to announce that we’ve expanded our level of sales support and training on the West Coast with a West Territory Manager and a MakerBot Demo Center at the Stratasys office in Valencia, California. MakerBot believes that this presence will further drive adoption of MakerBot 3D Printers among businesses and schools in the region.

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Enhance STEAM learning in your classroom with engaging challenges like building racecars, creating 3D puzzles, designing airboats, and more! MakerBot Learning has brought together advanced 3D printing lessons that are as rewarding as they are challenging. Through lessons that involve 3D design and iteration, educators can improve learning retention and reinforce tough concepts. Peruse this fun collection of Thingiverse lesson plans and pick a project that’ll inspire big STEAM exploration in your classroom.

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Accessible, reliable desktop 3D printing is about more than having the right piece of equipment. It’s about having a full set of reliable, easy-to-use solutions that streamline your 3D printing experience from start to finish. At MakerBot, that’s why your experience is so important to us. 

It all starts with a 3D printable file. Within Thingiverse, there’s more than 1.6 million 3D designs, most of which are free. There, you can also alter or enhance designs with any one of our community’s new apps. Let’s say you’ve found a file there, created a 3D file in a CAD program, or generated one from a 3D scanner, like the MakerBot Digitizer.

From there, MakerBot Desktop software allows you to manage, prepare, print, and share your 3D creations. You can also fine tune layout and print settings for the best results. Since our reliable, accessible 3D printers are Wi-Fi enabled, you can print seamlessly and remotely manage or monitor your progress on the MakerBot Mobile app. All along the way, our online support site and expert support team are there for you, whether you have questions or need to minimize downtime.

Even with these solutions, we want to ensure that you can get the most from your 3D printing experience. In this series of MakerBot Learning Tips, we offer four video tutorials and blog posts with essential info and best practices for MakerBot Desktop. We cover: What is MakerBot Desktop?, How to Lay Out Files, Print Settings, and Exporting Files.

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