Modeling toolsīlender's standard mesh modeling tools in Edit mode are powerful in their own right. If more precise tooling is necessary after that, you'll at least have a physical object you can reference when building it with CAD.

In the context of 3D printing and rapid prototyping, Blender is best suited for quickly getting your ideas in a format that can be printed so you can get a sense of how the 'real thing' might look and feel. That said, a lot of consumer-level 3D printers don't have that level of precision, either. Blender simply doesn't have a lot of the precision features that CAD operators expect to see. Rather, its primary purpose is to serve as an artist's tool. Before getting started, I should emphasize that Blender is not a CAD (Computer-Aided Design) tool. In Part 2, I'll examine the process for actually creating those models that you want to print. In Part 1 of my series on getting started with 3D printing in Blender, I covered basic preliminary steps for getting your Blender environment set up for creating your own 3D models, ready to be 3D printed.

3d print blender model