Windows Launches 3D Printing Soon

Microsoft announced that it will be adding a 3-D printing through its Windows 8.1. This new feature aims to aid the growing number of creative people like designers, and  “makers” alike. It is expected that millions of PCs will  have native support for 3-D printing.

Windows 8.1 will feature plug-and-play support for 3-D printers. Much like plugging in a standard printer, one can go into any number of Windows apps, click the file menu, and choose to print the document. Windows 8.1 makes it easier for printing from different applications on different 3D printers without having to export and import design files. With a supported 3D printer, one can just select the Devices charm and choose Print (or use File, Print in a desktop application) and see a 3D printer connected to the PC the way it is with a normal printer.

Microsoft’s 3D printer

No 3-D printer companies currently support plug-and-play on Windows 8.1, but after Microsoft’s latest operating system is released, Microsoft expects that a number of 3-D printers will take advantage of the feature.

With Windows as still the world’s most used PC operating system, Microsoft’s new feature will serve as a huge validation for the 3-D printing industry and a crucial step towards making 3-D printing easier and more accessible. The MakerBot Replicator 2 3-D printer, a popular 3-d printer which was tried during the Microsoft Build developers conference in San Francisco, will now be available in select Microsoft stores.

The 3-D printer has choices like what material to print with and whether the object is solid or hollow in a familiar interface that looks like picking paper size and whether to print in colour.

For an app to work with the 3D printing support in Windows 8.1, it has to support the new 3D printing APIs in the platform; Microsoft is releasing a SDK at recent conference so developers can do that more easily and several other printers (including some open source 3D printing projects) already support it. It’s not quite universal for 3D printing, but it’s a great start on simplifying a technology.

Source: www.cnn.com, www.techradar.com