3D printing your creations with Shapeways is easy, but designing your 3D models can get a little bit tricky. Fret not! We’ve compiled a list of five design software that are used extensively in the 3D printing world which you can start using today, regardless of your skill or budget. Without further ado, here’s a quick rundown of the software that’s ready for to make your 3D printing dreams come true.

Designed for industrial uses, it’s well known that HP nylon plastic works incredibly well for HP’s big manufacturing clients looking to move over to 3D printed production parts. And it performs outstandingly for functional uses. But our uniquely varied community of creators has shown that its applications go far beyond the purely industrial, redefining its possibilities along the way. People like you are discovering that everything from sleek eyeglasses to intricate designs for items like jewelry, phone cases, and miniatures printed in HP look wonderful and hold up to impacts, daily manual use, and other wear and tear. So bring on your living hinges, coils, connectors, and brackets. And don’t forget that decorative elements shine in this material.

At Shapeways, we want to make 3D printing accessible to everyone who wants to do it. So to that end, we want to give you a quick rundown on just how we can make you an official 3D creator in mere minutes. We’ve worked for years to make this process as smooth and open to you as possible, so here’s a quick rundown on how we make things easy.

As if we needed any more clarification that we are indeed living in the bastardized future foretold by The Jetsons yet fulfilled by Demolition Man, 3D printers have existed for thirty years and seem to be about ten years away from being the magic food-generating boxes seen in Star Trek. However, in recent years, the methods for creating these wonders of technology have been made much more cost-effective, and as a result, more and more aspiring engineers (or mad scientists) have been able to create things that truly benefit humanity (or enslave it using 3D-printed robot monkeys). Awesome, right? Just wait until you see these insane things you can make with them.

While talking heads argue endlessly over the wisdom of Apple’s biggest acquisition to date, a small but important target demographic is being left out. People aren’t taking into account how this purchase fits like the horn-rimmed non-glasses or thrift store plaid shirt on everyone’s favorite trendy amalgamation of shitty attitudes, the hipster. Today’s greasy-haired, bearded misfit who loves the obscure and obtuse, the renewable and the organic. The only thing they love better than reveling in their bohemian lifestyles is telling other people how much better it is than anything else ever. Now, to be fair – most people who look like hipsters aren’t. This article focuses on the aggregated stereotype of a very broad swath of people, and the undesirable behaviors that can, but many times do not, develop – music snobbery, misinformed but incredibly zealous convictions, and shallow motivations to name a few. The following are some of the finer points of this acquisition that fits the hipster lifestyle like a false sense of entitlement.

If you want to see some of my oldest pieces, check out this page right here. I've loved tech and gadgets long before 2014, but this was the first time I got paid for it.