Despite Blender being complete overkill for this simple part, and the fact Blender isn’t well suited for designing mechanical parts anyway, a lot of people asked for a Blender tutorial.

So, you got a 3D printer for the holidays, and you’re excited to dive in. Chances are, you’re not sure where to begin. What can you print? What’s fun? What’s useful?

You can model your heart out without worrying too much about HDD consumption. When I started learning how to 3D model, I began in AutoCAD and then worked over to Z-Brush.

Proponents of 3D printing have long hyped the idea that if you think of something new or break something you own, you can just push a button on your computer and print a new one in minutes ...

In the first part of this tutorial, we took a look at the idea behind Blender – mesh editing – and how to interact with vertices, edges, and faces to make a thing.