Can 3D Printing help you?

[Jsnyder]

Hey Everyone

 

I'd like to preface this with i have talked to Jeff Mottle and he's ok'ed this post, thanks!

 

My name is Jonathan, and am a Artist at Offload studios.

 

We are a 3D Printing service company located just outside of Vancouver B.C.

You can check our site to see some of our work.

 

it's at

 

http://www.offloadstudios.com

 

Currently our studio works mostly on personal art work and game studio's.

 

So this post is mainly to gather interest to see if this is a valuable tool for your area's of expertise.

 

Would 3D Printing benefit you in show small scale version of the design to the client?

 

If it would, how would it most benefit you? Cut away buildings? Movable furniture so they could re-arrange layouts? Stackable parts to build multi-floor buildings.

 

I'd love to hear your feeback. If there are any questions feel free to post or e-mail me

 

Thanks

Jonathan

[gsscott50@hotmail.com]

I think having a physical model of a project can help clients immensely. However, from what I know of the technology, it is quite expensive to produce a 3D print of a model. Can you give any indication of a price for such services?

[neil poppleton]

We had a couple of these models produced a few years back from a californian comapny, and would also be interested to know current prices, and colour options.

[Jsnyder]

We do print in Colour, 24bit output directly from painted textures.

 

As for cost, if you'd like to email me, we can talk a bit about pricing and even get you a quote on one of your pieces if you'd like, and see where we can go.

 

I think pricing has changed quite a bit different from a few years back then what it is now.

[WAcky]

I had a look at this a little while ago and while the price seemed right, getting a complex building into a water-tight model was just way too hard and was going to take way too long for the client to be able to afford.

[innerdream]

I was a professional model maker for many years at Disney and for many big Architects. I personally didn't think it met the criteria for a good Architectural model. Perhaps the housing industry could be a good fit but not the type of clients and firms I am use to.

[John Dollus]

I've used 3d printing in the past for projects (though it's been years ago) and it generally worked pretty well. cutaways were probably the most helpful for the architectural clients with being able to move furniture resting on the bottom of the list in terms of useful application. Being able to stack modular elements is an interesting concept but it doesn't sound like it would be very cost effective. There was often damage in shipping as well though perhaps the build material has improved in the last couple years so it's not as much of an issue.

personally, I think the software today encourages sloppy modeling making rapid prototyping more difficult unless you start out modeling with that specific application in mind.

 

On your website, I would suggest adding a section in your preparation doc showing photos of completed models with a ruler in the shot compared to the 3d data to help communicate how your clients should build their models. The screenshots are good but it's lacking a real world counterpart. It would drive home the importance of thickness and support structures.

Edited January 28, 2009 by John Dollus

[Jsnyder]

Hey John Dollus

 

Thanks for the comment i'll get someone to take a look in that for sure.

 

Innerdream, that's very understandable, maybe this would be more suited to the housing market and that's something I will have to look into. I wanted to make sure that everyone knew about our services and that if there was some way we could improve it to be more beneficial to your are as well then that would be great.

 

Thanks for all the comments so far guys. I'm hoping we can help someone out here!

[Jeff Mottle]

I know a few larger architectural firms have their own in house model printers. In fact, Morphosis has a full sized workshop just for models with 2 or 3 machines. They printed large models in sections and then crazy glued them all together. Some were quite large. I think they gave up the space, but they used to have a storage warehouse too with a forklift for all of the crated models.

 

I definetly think there is a need on large scale commercial projects as well, not just residential. At SIGGRAPH this year there was an entire exposition dedicated just to some of these models.

[Jeff Mottle]

Here are a few more pics. Not all are 3d printed, but most are. Should give you a good idea of what the higher end firms are printing and building.

[innerdream]

Interesting Jeff. Those look like study models and I am guessing were done in house by most? Gensler has a printing type machine in the LA office but I really think the models look bad. You can't get the lines of the building to read well unless you paint them because the plastic is translucent to a degree.

 

Anyhow, maybe I'm out of the loop and more firms are using 3D printing?

[Jeff Mottle]

Anyhow, maybe I'm out of the loop and more firms are using 3D printing?

 

Don't know for sure, but the technology/quality seems to be increasing exponentially ever year I see them at tradeshows.

[3DRG]

When I started my 3D Architectural Printing business about 4 years ago, the big market was homebuilders. We would convert 2D blueprints to 3D and print from there. They were interested in cutaways to help their clients visualize their projects. We would print a lot of FDM parts back then but now we’re printing more Polyjet, SLA, SLS & Z-corp prints for architects as the home builder market has slowed significantly. The last year has been a killer, but I am hopeful that things will start to turnaround, soon.

 

It is true that the biggest hurdle we have is the printability of the files we receive. Most of my time has been spent fixing files and educating our customers on how to create a better file. Most 3D programs aren’t “solid” modeling programs but that doesn’t stop us from building anything. We’ve printed from most every 3D program out there; Sketchup, Rhino, Formz, 3D Studio Max, Revit, ADT, Zbrush, Maya, any program we can get a file from. The files we’ve received range from total rebuild to filling in a few holes. Some programs are starting to embrace 3D printing by realizing plug-ins to help create better printable files (STL files).

Revit :

 

I’m sure other programs will follow very soon.

It’s really not that hard to model a 3D printable file if you start your project off with this goal in mind. I put together a pdf for creating printable STL files. It’s the current revision so if you have any suggestions please let me know what I could add to make it better. It’s on my website.

 

In my experience, architects are seeing the value in having a physical model, especially when they can be printed directly from a file they are working on for an economical price. The prices have come down quite a bit and you can get a small study model for as low as a couple hundred dollars.

 

Here are some pics. you can see more on my web page 3drg . com

 

best,

 

brian ehler

3drg

[DarinClifton]

Can you talk a little about Offload's process, what equipment you use, what makes your pipeline unique. We have done several SLS and SLA model in the past, for instance how do you get color/texture on your models, this has always been a challenge.

Thanks so much!

Darin