Celebrating 6 years and 80 models on Printables!

When I was young, I thought I would be an artist. Creativity seemed to be my biggest talent, and I'd often get compliments on my artistic creations. But life takes its turns, and technology came to occupy a space of special importance after I learned how to code – creativity now could present itself in more reproducible and predictable forms, and that was good. Coding was fun and I did it for a long time, until my career took me to DevRel and Technical Writing. I love writing! But not everything is fun to write about, you know. And those creative energies must go somewhere, or else I'd go crazy. That's when 3D design for 3D printing came in the spotlight for me as a wholesome hobby.

We got our first printer between 2018 and 2019. It was a Prusa MK3S kit. Took me and my partner a long time to get it all up and running, and it was such a steep learning curve for me to understand how everything worked! Once I was able to print stuff, I started trying to create something custom, and that was another struggle. Started with FreeCAD and let me say it wasn't as polished as it is today. Made a couple things here and there, but the whole experience was still far from what I would consider as creative" and fun".

Fast-forward to 2023, somewhere in October, my daughter (she was 7) made some fun Halloween drawings and I turned them into 3D printed keychains. While she was still interested, my partner found this 3D design program that run on tablets, and we got it installed on her tablet so she could try and create a design of her own.

This program was called NomadSculpt. At first, I did not expect much of it. But after watching a few tutorial videos on YouTube, I saw great potential! I ended up buying myself a tablet so that I would be able to use it too. This was exactly two years ago.

And here I am today with 80 published models on Printables ! Hooray! \o/ It's a big milestone, and with the release of the new Articles" feature, I thought it was the perfect opportunity to tell this story <3 

Nowadays, I still design with FreeCAD when I need precision or when I want dynamic / parametric models. But NomadSculpt has taken a big space in my heart for giving me so much freedom to create in a visual and intuitive way. Before that, 3D designing felt like a chore or a coding project – not too bad, but lots of work! And with NomadSculpt it feels more like getting a blank canvas and expressing what's in your mind. 

I also feel very happy about the Printables platform and how we are able to connect to each other as a community, having the contests and prusameters really helped in keeping me motivated to create more models and share them with the world for free in this platform. I hope to get to 100 models soon! \o/ cheers and thanks for everyone responsible for making the Printables platform what it is today.