My dear wife has offered me a 3D printer for Christmas because she heard me talking to two of my cousins who have them. In fact I asked one of them to make me a part that had been downloaded on to that Thingi site. He had it done in short order and sent it to me.

My question is, if you have a part in hand and want a 3D copy made, what is the process? I believe CAD drawings are needed and then a "slicing" program has to be written. Same question if you have a drawing made up, what is the next step? If I need to have a CAD program on my desktop, will it work with Windows 7 Professional? Thanks for any advice.