Hi Danny, well I definitely agree with you - it is definitely easy for 3d printing to get over hyped.

I guess it's like a lot of things in that it's difficult to convey all the problems and tricky areas in some kind of informative news article.


> not only in using the software also the visualisation in working in 3d space for a non
> technical person and the geometry requirements for 3d printing

Yup, the learning curve involved with just getting comfortable with 3d spatial relationships is easily underestimated.

One thing that can help with that is by being able to get a lot of stuff done by working in 2D instead, which is an area that NURBS modeling techniques are good at utilizing as compared to say polygon sub-d modeling where you have to work with a big bunch of 3D points all the time.

But yeah there's still a learning curve involved. I mean there's a huge learning curve involved in learning how to draw well with a pen or pencil, and those are supremely "easy to use" - just pick it up and drag it on paper.

There's sort of a wave of efforts at making 3D modeling easier to use by focusing primarily on just assembling predefined kits of object pieces, and then trying to provide a wide variety of those kits. The new release of Autodesk 123D is kind of like that, and Tinkercad too. But this approach tends to limit what you can do a lot. A lot of times there is a balance like that, the more that what you can do is limited and heavily guided it makes things easier to do but also you get less freedom with what you are able to do as well.

- Michael