Well this 3d printing malarkey is something that can cause the brain to melt and dribble out of your ears. I have been playing around with a model for the overall roof columns. The hope is that if I can succesfully design one than it can be amended to create the other two types.

So having beavered away, I then have to convert it to a "dae" file, then download another programme and convert it to an "stl" file, then downlaod another programme , because Shapeways doesn't like the design - something to do with holes - this programme every time I pressed fix made it worse. Finally I discovered a function which allowed you to upload the model to the cloud - it fixed it and then you downloaded it.

However something funny happens along the way a model which started out as 92 mm is suddenly 3.2mm abns too small for Shapeways.

So I go back through the conversion process and open it in Sketchup, now its over 16 metres long?????

Anyway after reducing it down again I've managed to get it to upload to Shapeways.

The girders for the canopy were too thin? so I have to decide whether to proceed or beef them up a bit - they only seem to be 0.1mm to thin, so I might risk it and see what one of each looks like.

Anyway here is a presentable version of the roof columns