Best 3d Printing Software for Beginners

I deserve shapiro with the dr. vex channel and i am here today to tell you about a hidden treasure a software product that's been around completely free for the last five years but is really not discussed very much in the hobbyist 3d printing community it's a software product that can allow my vision for 3d printing to really be possible I believe that if you can use an inkjet printer it should be able to use a 3d printer should be that easy this software product which is a combination of design software a slicer that converts your models into something you can print and control software for 3d printers allows you to just plug your 3d printer into a USB port on your computer and use it in many ways like you use an inkjet printer so stay tuned and let's learn something new we're going to learn about version 2 of this software product together [Music] [Applause] let me interject here with a quick viewer guide this is a relatively long video so you will see as you're seeing in the corner now you will see a table of contents that will allow you to navigate to various parts of the video quickly thanks for watching use the table of contents to go to the areas you're interested in I'd encourage you if possible to watch the full video because they're various tips and ideas throughout all of the commentary okay let's get started the software we're going to talk about is matter control version 2 that was recently just released a few weeks ago from matter hackers now matter hackers is a very interesting company their mission in life is to I'm reading it right off their website to turn the ideas they have into the things they use to allow people to make things my mission with the doctor VAX channel is to introduce the skills and technologies to people of all ages and to say to them that these technologies are accessible to you as part of doing that I needed to find a software component that works of 3d printers and makes it as seamless as printing to an inkjet printer I believe that with matter control version 2 I found that so we're going to do a unboxing in essence we're going to install the software onto a computer and then I'm gonna walk you through the software and show you how easy it is to use and where it has the capabilities of the better-known slicers cura slic3r Prusa edition or the regular edition simplified 3d and where it's not quite as sophisticated perhaps as a trade off today for ease of use so let's turn to the computer and get started I'm going to start on the home page and then go to door and move over towards as software and add-ons then I'm going to click on matter control 3d software you'll see it's available for both Windows and Mac I would highly recommend you download the version 2 software the version 2 software specifically has some very interesting 3d modeling tools you could think about it as an earlier version of Tinkercad but with a bit more sophistication because it has a model history that's a bit like parametric modeling I'll explain what I mean so I'm on a Mac so I'm going to click download 2.0 I'll show you the installation on Mac but I'll also talk through the installation briefly on a PC so that you can see the best of both so we're going to click on download in the case of a Mac that's going to download it right here I'm gonna say show and finder and then I'm going to just double click on the file that it's downloaded and that will open up the software installation on a Mac software installation consists of dragging your application to the application folder I'll do that here I'll wait for it to copy it over and we are ready to go now on a PC the first procedure is you download the software in the same way then you click on the exe file which is used to start the installation and then you'll see a series of screens which you will click through there is the agreement screen followed by the select destination screen we're going to take all the defaults followed by the option to add it to the Start menu once again we're going to take the defaults we do want it to create a shortcut and this is very important you need to select the option to install the serial port drivers on a windows-based machine treating a USB is a serial port is not standard so you have to install drivers once you've done that you'll be given the option to click on install we're going to go ahead and install the software you will receive a warning message making sure that you agree to install a device driver you want to click on install and you'll click on finish and you'll be ready to start the program now that we've started the application let's take a look at how to use it first as a slicer because that's a traditional use converting a 3d object into something we can print then is a printer control program and finally as a design tool something that's very unusual to have combined in one tool so let's get started when it opens up to the screen you'll see there are four tabs across the top there is one for the store we're going to skip that too now for now one for the library and that will show you give you access to all of the prints that you've stored either locally or in the cloud along with your matter control application you do get a certain amount of cloud storage the next is for hardware we don't have a printer defined and the next is a new design since we'd like to use this with a particular printer we're going to close the new design tag go to the printer or the hardware tab press the plus and set up a printer I'm going to set this up for a monoprice select mini so let me scroll down here to monoprice select here I have a select mini version to that name seems fine so we're going to click Next now it's telling me that I should disconnect my printer I should then press Continue and now I should power on my printer and connect it I'll go ahead and do that and now we'll click the connect button and we'll see that it immediately connected to the printer without difficulty this program is very well crafted clearly well tested I think it's a very good match for entry-level printers such as a couple of the monoprice printers and a couple of the Cree ality Ender printers so now we'll see that our print bed is displayed down here we can use the scroll wheel to zoom in or zoom out on our mouse we can use the right mouse button to change the orientation we can click on home to reset two of you if I click on a particular view double click on the front double click in the middle on the top when I click on the blue bars on the sides or the angles I'll move in that direction we could click on the side and we can go back to the top view now the typical use for a slicer is to take a model that you've gotten off a finger verse or some other location so we're going to click on the open files dialog here and I'm going to take a model that I've gotten from some other location let's say simple animals the cow and I'm going to drag that to my work plane now you'll see this is slightly big if I hold the shift key will stay out scale it uniformly which is what I'd want to do because the Sassa fit together now I can move it to the middle of my work surface if I put it on the work surface and I have not scaled it properly then when I go to slice the model or convert it for 3d printing it will not do anything one other thing that's very very interesting you'll notice my copy of matter control has a white background there's a little icon on the bottom right called theme by default it comes up I believe in classic dark I happen to be old fashioned I know dark backgrounds are in vogue right now I prefer light white so we have our printer selected I can verify that because that's the name on this tab I can now click on slice this is going to use the defaults and it sliced our model or converted it I can look at the individual layers just as I would in any other tool this is a relatively small model it's a very flat surface if I click on this icon here I can go to a 2d view which I prefer and then I can see how it's going to paint any individual layer of the model and here's where the magic happens when I am ready I can go ahead and click on the down arrow here verify my layer thickness my fill and I can now click on setup to select my material so I'm going to select PLA and now I can print click on print to start printing you'll notice there was an option there to load filament it will extrude filament for you in order to load it now during this whole time it will show me what's occurring here on the screen as it works on the printer it will show me the progress over here right now it's hating the bed there's also some other very interesting information you can see that this print will cost 17 cents it will use about 3 meters of filament and it will take 44 minutes at any point I could cancel the print and I could start over let's see what would be a let's look at a bench II I could load that drag that into my surface here click slice this will take one hour and three minutes in order to print this I could look at the individual layers once again over here this will give us a more meaningful layer display so in that way it's very much like a regular select any other slicer reviews let's look at some of the slicer parameters if I click on the tab on the right I can see the individual areas that I can control on the slicer you'll see very similar parameters to any other slicer it does support a range of adhered heejun capabilities it does support the auto generation of supports and all of the typical retraction parameters under support it has some very nice capabilities such as air gap which give you the ability to ensure your supports are easier to remove overall I would say that this slicer more than adequate for someone starting in the in the field there are also the abilities to manually control your printer and one of the things that's very interesting is that you can adjust your Z offset that is in essence how close your printhead is to the print surface while the print is running so you can do micro adjustments of your Z offset while the print is running the display while the print is running is very very good you can also adjust temperature so many of the things you would do from the front panel of a printer or from app to print you can do here while the print is running you do have complete capabilities for defining what g-code is use what codes are sent to the printer before the print print after the print and then the other thing that's very interesting is it has a software bed leveling capability so by taking manual measurements using this as a tool you can store those in this application and it will adjust printhead measurements dynamically in order to ensure it's able to get a a good layer on your printer that's a very very unusual capability so that's basically it for the slicer capabilities I would grade it as a good solid slicer good for many typical prints but not the most advanced slicer in the industry now let's look at one other capability that is absolutely unique to this integrated tool we've already seen that you can use it to slice a print we've already seen you can use it to control a printer that makes it much easier than having to have multiple tools well you also can use it to create your prints it has a Tinkercad light capability where you can drag a primitive object on to the work surface you can change its dimensions either by typing in numbers let's make this 10 or by clicking directly on the corners and dragging it one way or the other you have all of the capabilities for rotating an object and in that regard it's very much like Tinkercad what is fundamentally different and very intriguing it feels like it's only partially fleshed out if you do get a history you'll see here it says cube so let's say I needed to make a particular part let's say this is going to be some type of shaft we'll make this a diameter of 10 we'll make it a little bit taller I'm gonna drag it on to here you'll see the cylinder and the cube are listed under the workspace and I can select them by clicking on their names that's also a bit like a parametric environment now if I select the two of them the icon over here allows me to align it I can click on a line and then say I want to align them centered and align them on the bottom or align the Z on the top and now they're glued together now in order to use that with another function I have to flatten it that will leave it properly aligned but it will remove the function from the parameter list why do I need to do that because perhaps I want to use this in a boolean operation so let's actually go and group these back together again I can do that with the group function over here so now there'll be one object and let's say want to make a hole all the way through this in order to put a bolt through it so let's drag another cylinder on here let's make this a diameter of five let's make this a little bit bigger um let's change the color just so we can see it a little easier how about this color here I'm going to drag it more or less into this area but then I'm going to select everything I'm going to align I'm going to line a center it that way I'm gonna Center it that way I want to actually not Center it on the Z I'm going to leave that alone if I go to make a modification now it's all collapsed together so I have to flatten it then I can select an individual element I'm going to push that down so now it's moving through it now I'm going to select this this and this all three elements and then I can apply boolean operators I can combine it together into a single operation element I can subtract one or more of these elements from the others I can say show me only the places where these individual objects intersect or I can do subtract and replace which I have not experimented with yet so I'm not sure exactly what that does we're going to do a subtract and I'm going to subtract the cylinder from the group click on update it will show you over here what it's doing and we now have a hole through our object now you'll see now also that the subtract function is in my history so that means this is now glued together until I go to subtract and flatten it and now these individual components could be selected individually once again once I have a component like this I can save it under give a name to either my local computer or I can say if it - which would be the local library or I can slay save it up to the cloud which is web storage provided by matter control so this is a very very interesting program in summary it has the ability to slice objects will actually take and slice this object now once an object is sliced it has the ability to control a printer I can click on print here start print and it that object will now be printed and it has the object to do modeling right within the program finally a couple other capabilities that are very interesting you can load in G code that slice in another slicer and still use the print capability you can load in STL files designed in another design environment and slice them and then print them or as we've just shown you can take and create an object from scratch and take and model it slice it and print it okay let me summarize what we've learned together matter controls a slicer is solid it is not the most sophisticated slicer it will not evolve as rapidly as a sophisticated slicer however matter control as a software product is unique I believe it's the Microsoft Office of the 3d printing world I believe that matter control should be the first software product someone uses for 3d printing this vase was modeled in matter control it was sliced in Vaes mode in matter control it was printed over USB cable from matter control that is a unique capability and I believe because of that it's a wonderful way for someone to get started with 3d printing so if you enjoyed this video download manner control give it a try leave comments let's begin a dialogue I use multiple slicers multiple software products let's talk about it together if you enjoyed this video give me a thumbs up subscribe to the channel share with other people and most importantly let's continue to learn things together [Music] [Applause]

Channel: Make With Tech (MakeWithTech)

Views: 144,807

Rating: 4.9315295 out of 5

Keywords: 3d printing, 3d design software, 3d printer software, 3d printing slicer, 3d design for beginners, 3d design software for beginners, 3d printer software tutorial, 3d printer software for beginners, 3d printer software free, 3d printer software for mac, 3d printer software 2018, 3d printing slicer tutorial, 3d printing slicer settings, 3d printing slicer free, free 3d design software for beginners, prusa i3 mk3, creality ender, matter control, make with tech, makewithtech

Id: vIA71tSpTC8

Length: 23min 21sec (1401 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 05 2019