I received my author copies of Getting Started with MakerBot today! This book was over a year in the making, now finally I can hold it in my hands.
Getting Started with MakerBot is now available in print and Ebook from O’Reilly Media. You can also buy it at Amazon.com.
Even if you prefer a different 3D printer, this book is useful to anyone who wants to learn 3D modeling basics or affordable 3D scanning (chapter 9). These chapters are useful for beginners no matter what printer you have. About half of of the book is devoted to those topics.
Chapter 8: Designing for the MakerBot
In which we provide the reader with detailed tutorials on how to bring envisioned objects into 3D printed reality
This chapter includes detailed tutorials for 3D Tin, Tinkercad, 123D Make and SketchUp. In addition, two OpenSCAD tutorials (how to make a parametric ring and DXF extrusion) are in Appendix C of the book.
Chapter 9: Scanning in 3D
Welcome to the bleeding edge
This chapter was first printed as a draft excerpt in Make: Ultimate Guide to 3D Printing. It covers creating scans with ReconstructMe and 123D Catch and how to clean up / modify the mesh for printing.