Hi there!

I’m looking into getting myself a good printer and I am wondering if I need to install some platform-specific drivers for them to run. I am running Debian 12 (GNU/Linux) and I am afraid that I must run some proprietary blob to connect to the printer.

Could someone share their experience please? Even if you don’t use Linux, your feedback would be very appreciated!

(Also, while you are at it, please share some recommendations for printers, I don’t really know where to go (>v<) Have about ±500€ )

  • RichardEnglish
    1•6 hours ago

    Blender can absolutely be great at creating precise geometry, one just needs to know how to properly use the tool. Yes, the workflow will be much different than in other CAD, but principally, Blender is just as good as any other, or even better due to a more extensive development history and greater degree of maturity.

    • @[email protected]English
      2•2 hours ago

      It has its strength. The downside to blender is it’s geometry based unlike Fusion and others that are parametric.

      Where this shines, for example, is when you’re defining a circle with a given radius. If it’s 4mm in a cad program and you export to STL it will be polygon based. But you can adjust the density of the export and, if you need to, scale your cad up 200%, 300%, etc and export again. Always resulting in the closest approximation of that circule in the stl or export. This way you don’t lose any fidelity. Blender does have some great tools for interpolating points in a mesh so it’s not useless either.

      The best analogy I can think of is raster and vector. Doubling the size of a vector doesn’t result in aliasing. But, likewise, doing a high quality image of something photorealistic is not great on vector.

      I use Fusion for cad modeling. The parametric design workflow allows me to adjust measurements, etc and have them show downstream, etc. But if I’m going to import something that’s already an 3d model I’ll use blender and mesh mixer to cleanup the model first.

      I’ve also used just blender when using game assets to pose a model before exporting to a mesh for use in a slicer. Since, again, it’s the tool for the job.