Today has been a day of software, probably a bit too much time spent on the computer and a few hours looking at a terminal window…

But I did what needed to be done.  I now have my laptop refreshed with a fresh install of Windows 7 and a fresh install of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS installed.  Well they were fresh, now they are updated and have everything needed(that i can think of) installed and ready to print once my Mendel Prusa is assembled.  As recommended my Makergear I have installed the Arduino IDE, Printrun(Pronterface) and I have a preliminary setup of Slic3r(he gives you free reign on a slicing program).  I also installed OpenSCAD and InkScape so that I can make some vectors to import and extrude with OpenSCAD.

Pronterface up and running but no printer to control... yet

The Arduino IDE up and running just waiting to control the Mega 2560

Of course that did not go very smoothly at first, i had to get myself used to a couple of things are I had not used before. Git is an amazing development tool, but as someone who has not tried to do program seriously since 2003 I had no use for it up until now. But with the basic documentation (chapter 2) I was more than able to use it to get all of the items(pronterface, sprinter and i got sfact just in case) that I needed to download from github without having to spend a half hour downloading each file individually.

Slic3r up and running

Slic3r also took a bit of time because it is only written for an x86 architecture… well I had already installed and setup quite a few items on the x64 Version of Ubuntu that I downloaded and so the search was on for a way to make it work. Luckily I found Dusts RepRap Blog and he had just done what I was needing to do and even had it all written out for me.

Getting some of the basics of OpenSCAD down

So with that setup I have been learning more about OpenSCAD and Inkscape so as I come up with ideas I will be able to make them work.  I was kind of leery at first of using it as I am not the biggest fan of scripting(although i do enjoy a good terminal session) It is quite straight forward although I expect it to be one of those easy to use but challenging to master kind of things.

So tomorrow i will start the assembly because to my pleasure MakerGear send their kit priority mail. So the week I was expecting to have made all of what I did today even more important.

Later this week I will be doing a full photo breakdown of the unboxing as well as the items included in the kit.

I feel like i should come up with some sort of catchy closing line but alas at this hour my mind draws a blank.