MatterControl Basics: Loading and Printing an Object
We've previously worked with the small cube that MatterControl provided as an example.
Now we're going to cover loading and slicing an object from start to finish.
For this section, I recommend you head over to
http://www.repables.com
and find
something you'd like to print. I'm going to chose the Orion Key Chain
(
http://www.repables.com/r/151/
) for my example print. You don't have to make the same
choice, but pick something geometrically “simple” in order to make the learning process a bit
easier.
Most (if not all) 3D printer slicing programs can read a file format called “STL”. (You can
learn more about this file format, including its origins, here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STL_
%28file_format%29
) When you download a file from Repables or one of the other free, online
object repositories, you'll often get the file as a zip file. One nice feature of MatterControl is the
ability to select a zip file and MatterControl will transparently extract all the files it knows how to
read and load them up into your print queue.
To load a file into MatterControl, make sure you're on the
Print Queue
page and click
the
Add
button at the bottom right hand corner of the window.
Navigate to where you've stored the STL or ZIP file and open it using the Open File
dialog that will appear.
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