Well at work we were getting a 3D printer in about half year. (long order time on that model).
It seamed fun to me, we already had someone on Autocad, so i thought lets see if Blender might be something.
2 years later i haven’t done any 3d print yet, but several beta product demonstrations, and simulations.
In fact currently we’re not printing that much, as most of the time the leapfrog is broken (its a terrible product, stay away from it).
However we came to learn that if you invent new products, that it is really a big help to draw something quickly. Not only for interested customers but also for ourselves, to see problems ahead in time.
Why not use autocad for this, well it turns out i draw a lot faster with blender then the autocad guy with autocad and in this production phase exact measurements are not important yet, visualizing ideas quickly is important, might be typical for invent/design/engineer
Next comes presentations in blender, that’s most important to us
Stills and animations look well…
You know…Simply said : SUPER AWESOME… and that’s important if you deal with investors.
Its as if we have product photos, instead of drawings, they look so amazingly real.
While the product isnt even build yet…still ideas.
Sometimes though i have to convert an autocad drawing delivered by custommer, or our internal, into blender.
So then i work with exact measurements, makes it even more real, but it requires a lot polishing.
Or if it doesn’t need to be exact the same, i simply redraw it in blender which is usually faster to do still
(well if there is not to much details).
The idea of learning blender to do 3 prints, kept me drawing weekly for a half year, and that spurred me to learn as much as i could, any topic was ok for this, i even used blender game emulation once for work to simulate something (because i knew what it could do from that learning period). over time i came to love how blender works, how its actively maintained, and how surprising futures get added over time.
Things like light portals, etc they’re just candy to me (like a kid loves his candy ).
edit : oops not correctly i did two 3d prints, those were autocad drawings with problems, which i fixed in blender and they got printed. but i never printed something of my own imagination, i had ideas of a chess board, but the leapfrog just isnt that stable enough and its often broken.