I mostly use my desktop 3D printer which works with fused deposition modeling technology (FDM), actually it is an upgraded/hacked Makerbot Replicator2, which is capable to 3D print with experimental materials as well, like laybrick (sandstone-like stuff) and laywood (wooden filament).

In general, every single 3D printing technology like FDM, SLS or DLP has got its own pros and cons, so the designs should be optimized for the actual chosen additive manufacturing method and the material for the fabrication. If you design something in 3D, at the beginning, you probably don’t know which type of machine and material you want to use to realize your object. I just would like to share the basic design rules of my general design for 3D printing process and the machines I’ve worked with. As some of you have already discovered, once you start working with 3D printers this is very different! You can completely ignore the physical world.

In the practice, the most 3D objects will only contain the meshes that are visible, they don’t need to really connect, there can be a lot of 2D elements in the geometry and there can be some holes and broken meshes or duplicates which can disturb the slicing process while generating the g-code, etc. If you want to design a 3D model for a visualization render or a video game, you needn’t pay any attention to real world physics.

Sculptgl 3d