HOW TO GO FROM AUTODESK INVENTOR TO 3D PRINTING WITH ULTIMAKER

As you’re aware we now have a 3D printer called Ultimaker. We now have the capacity and capability to not just design products but also do some prototyping. Understandably we’ve been playing with the printer and with Autodesk Inventor. We’d like to share a workflow to take model from Inventor to Ultimaker.

Icosahedron

The above figure is an Icosahedron that we’ve designed in-house. An Icosahedron is one of only five perfect Euclidean solids in which all edges have the same length and the area of all surfaces is the same. The other four such solids are Tetrahedron, Cube, Octahedron and Dodecahedron.

Now that we’ve got this solid ready, we need to convert it into an ‘stl’ file. Conventional Autodesk Inventor wisdom will suggest you to go as shown in the image below and select ‘stl’ in the export file type. However, there is a better way to do this.

Firstly, go to the extreme right side on your 3D Model tab and click the downward pointing arrow. You should see the menu as shown below. In this menu, look for the option that says ‘3D Print’ and make sure it is checked.

Now you should see the ‘3D Print’ button on the ribbon as shown in image below. Click on this and you enter the 3D Printing workspace.

The 3D Print environment is shown below. In this environment you select your 3D printer and specify print settings and then export your model into an ‘stl’ file.

This is it. Once your 'stl' file is ready, then all you need to do is to take it into the software that will slice it and then print it using the SD card or USB cable.