User's Manual Part 1

CHAPTER 3. UNDERSTANDING THE POLAR 3D 2.0 ENVIRONMENT49
see Chapter 7. Note that STEAMtrax materials include a
breakdown of the engineering design process that goes into
additional detail, in particular further breaking down the
“define” and “develop” stages. Note als o that education-
ally, promoting the practices of science and engineering –
promoting the cognitive, social, and physical practices of
scientific inquiry and modeli n g, and engineering design and
construction – is a key compon ent of the NGSS (Next Gen-
eration Sc i en ce Standards).
2. Select an idea for something to build: Step 1 may have
generated several potential solution ideas; choose an object
or part to try creating.
3. Design 3D model: Generate a 3D model of the object using
av ailable CAD (Co m p u t er Aided Design) software such as
OpenSCAD, Bl ocksCAD, or Tinkercad; (see Chapter 6 for
additional CAD softwar e op t i o n s) ; use t h e CAD so ftware
to generate an industry-standard .stl file.Orfind,shared
in the Polar Cloud, an already created .stl file.
4. Print: Load th e generated .stl file(s) onto a 3D printer
for print i n g. See Section 4.6 for details of using the Polar
Cloud to sub m it a print job. (Or when you don’t have
network access to the Internet, see Ap pendix C.)
5. Solve any printing pro b lem s: S e e Chapter 8 and Chapter
11.
6. Test: Try using the ob ject; test and evaluate it.
7. Refine: As needed, revise, im p r ove, o r refine the design;
then return to step 3 to generate an updated 3D model.