Sketchup is a great choice if you’re new to 3D modeling: it’s free, easy to learn and there are TONS of free tutorials available. Even so, you may need to know a few things before you can get your models 3D printed.
Community member Marcus Ritland from Denali 3D Design shares 8 great tips on MasterSketchup.com. These tips include making your models printable, making them look great and keeping them affordable.
Don’t forget to give him some kudos on the forum!
We create SketchUp tutorials (http://www.go-2-school.com/sketchup-tutorials) and one more tip we teach that we might not be obvious from this post is that you may need to account for creating an “escape hole” for hollow parts in your SketchUp model to make sure it’s 3D printable.
We used Marcus’ tips as inspiration to create a new guide: 3D Printing from SketchUp. In the guide, we included a short video tutorial that references a number of Marcus’ tips from the article above. Also, the tutorial shows how to design for eventual printing from Shapeways.
The guide is a work in progress, so we’d love to hear any feedback!