I didn’t have any firsthand experience with 3D printing before we started, but I was and am still very interested in the process. Take the different kinds of 3D printers available, even just at this university, there’s the “basic” one where filament is melted and strewn across a plate thinly and allowed to cool very quickly because of the thinness. Then there’s the more advanced printers where the nozzle outputting the material is submerged in a resin-like substance, and this allows the prints to have more detail and the ability to make things that the basic one couldn’t dream of making.
I had an item(s) that I wanted to print and was pretty sad that we were only making a LEGO brick, and the process had levels of scuff that I could only dream of. First, my computer, that I was usually at, wasn’t working in the slightest. The monitors were on, but the HDMI cable wasn’t working properly, so I just couldn’t do any meaningful work that day. And when I was able to work on it, the program was acting all wonky, I couldn’t place the circles on the inside of the hollowed out rectangle properly, and then I suddenly could? This is how it ended up.
Fusion 360 was definitely a program that I could 3D model in, but I feel like there are so many better options, at least for beginners. The Item(s) I mentioned before were a keychain and a zipper head; both were made in Tinkercad. I was hoping that I would at least be able to find a place I could print them, even if it wasn’t for this project, but alas, I couldn’t find any good sources to do it through.