We used a Stratasys Mojo desktop 3D printer this time since it was the first available FDM printer in the office that day, but these parts could also be printed in the new Stratasys F170. I knew my design prototype needed to be functional and somewhat durable, in case I whacked it by accident, so I decided to make it out of ABS. Within a few hours, he had finished 3D printed parts on trays waiting for inspection and post-processing. Once my files were complete, including the additional print information, I sent them to the Engineer at our Pittsburgh office. STL file with a lot of the 3D printing pre-processing done. I was even able to get visual feedback of where support material will be needed. I selected which plane I wanted to be the bottom of the print and moved the part around in the envelope. When I was reviewing my output options, I was able to choose the printer and could choose from presets or enter the build envelope manually.

This can be very helpful if you won’t be the one printing your design and have special considerations that need to be met. It allowed me to perform a lot of the setup work typically done in the printer software. I changed the orientation, offset the build envelope and positioned the part all with the “3D Print” command.

xDesign has the option to set up the 3D print within the design system. There’s a second choice for exporting files which gives you more control over the printing process. By choosing this option, I could send my design file directly to an engineer for printing, and it would be up to him to edit the model for orientation, position it on the print tray, choose which support materials were needed, etc. The first method is by clicking “Export” and selecting. My case model was built with prototyping in mind so there are multiple ways to export a model for printing. The entire process from start to finish was easier than you may think. In part two of this series, I will look at one of the options for creating my design: FDM 3D printing. In our previous blog, we discussed my need to design a case for my Raspberry Pi, and why I chose SOLIDWORKS xDesign to do it.

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