Model Export for Shapeways

[Delltron]

I recently ordered a Gene Kerman from shapeways, and I was blown away by it when it got here.

So like a good kerbal fan I've decided to make a mission control in my computer case.

What I'm getting at is this; Would it be possible to devise a way so I can export my VAB creations as a Shapeways compatible model?

Adding my own shuttle to the mix would just put it over the top.

[xEvilReeperx]

Well, exporting the actual geometry of the vessel is quite straightforward. But it's probable you'd have to do some clean up in a modeling program yourself before it could be submitted to Shapeways. Automated tools can get it wrong. For instance, I exported this (using a plugin I hacked together in a couple of minutes and some copy+paste code from the Unity wiki):

But it has some issues. For an obvious one, there is no face on the bottom of the launch clamp bases:

There isn't a need for there to be since no user would ever see it as it's mounted to the ground, but for printing that's an issue. I ran it through cloud.netfabb.com and while I have to say the results were much more impressive than I thought, there would still be a serious problem:

You can see their tool removed the section of the radial decoupler that attaches the side tanks to the center, so the vessel is now visually in three separate pieces. The tool actually broke it into a total of 15 separate meshes; probably not a good thing when you want it to be all one object.

It's a cool idea but I think in this case some modeling experience will be necessary for good results. These meshes were designed with rendering and not printing in mind, after all