Oliver (my son, 7) designed his own ship in Minecraft but all those 90-degree angles aren’t easy to print. This one is printed at 45 degrees (by cutting off the “butt” of the ship) but still not that good (my son is becoming picky with his prints). What I would like to see is a tool that transforms a Minecraft-model into something more soft and by that makes it easier to print. Any ideas?
This is awesome. Get him hooked and understanding how to print and the mistakes that can be made at a young age.
Top parenting right here! Ten points for you sir.
Have you spent much time using supports in Cura? It does a pretty good job once you’ve adjusted to settings in expert mode.
@Tim_Rastall , no not really. I find the work after printing with full supports a bit tedious 
BUT perhaps we should give it a try. By the way, any suggestions on what to change from the default settings for support?
I find the horizontal gap can be smaller than default, as low as 0.15mm and the Z gap can also be reduced a touch, it seems these settings are very specific to material type etc so some experiments may be necessary to get it dialled in 
Ok. Thanks!!
Tired with http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:37351/#files and have more soft result:
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Modeling/Meshes/Smoothing
Very cool indded, wait till I show someone I know…
Supports aren’t really suggested for PLA since they bond too well. If you can play with dual extrusion, try water dissolving supports. That way he isn’t limited in his designs.
Yes you are right but dual extrusion is just too much work (plus I never got dual-extrusion working very well on my Ultimaker1).
I think understanding the limitations of the modelling/printing is part of the learning.
Awsome for a 7 year old I would be surprised if I could do that good and ive hade graphic design classes.
Don’t understimate the value of Minecraft He has learned A LOT of english by looking at Minecraft videos on YouTube. I am also amazed on how easy he builds stuff. He just clicks away.
think after resolve my issue and learned fine my 3dprinter give try to apply your suggest and try minecraft.
My son 6yo currently love thinkercad and http://www.buildwithchrome.com/ for build something with pc (sigh for buildwithchorme no possible to export 3d object.)
@Peter_Parnes I recently attended a Parent’s Evening for my 11 year old son and was told by his Art teacher that he has excellent 3D perception skills for his age. I dropped a few names of his friends towards this teacher and asked if they shared the same ability. She responded “Yes they do!”. I find it interesting that my son and these others spend hours playing Minecraft - it cannot be coincidence. Maybe video games, appropriately chosen, can enhance learning.
I strongly believe in that video games help development. I am 42 years old and I played video games from age 6 (IBM 3090 ;)). I strongly think it helps in confidence building and logical thinking.
Plus hand-eye-coordination, frustration tolerance, thinking around corners, etc etc
Minus we have glasses
@Mauro_Manco , regarding the link to Thingiverse, I do not get it how they did the softening? Is it a special server. Cannot really find any relevant info…
@Corinne_Hughes check this out. 3D printing Minecraft. Cool beans man!
@Mauro_Manco I think the glasses were rather caused in my case by 23 years of coding, not the gaming