Printbot is a plugin that integrates with Printcraft, a Minecraft 3D printing web portal. It allows you to easily add 3D printing capability to your server. Find out about Printcraft on our website www.printcraft.org. This is the same plugin that we use on our own custom 3D printing servers, and it connects to our webservice to upload and process model files.
Printbot depends on and uses the regions and selection capabilities of WorldGuard and WorldEdit to pick a portion of the world to print.
Printbot has only three commands:
Uploads a model as defined by a WorldGuard region to Printcraft's web service for 3D printing.
Uploads a model as defined by a WorldEdit selection to Printcraft's web service for 3D printing.
Download a model defined by a code, which is on the model's Printcraft web page, and places it in Minecraft.
When Printbot "prints" what it actually does is upload the model to a web service that processes the file in the background and makes it available for download from a webpage as an STL file, which can be printed on any 3D printer. The link to this web page is presented to the player.
Printcraft also offers simple one click integration with two commercial 3D printing services, iMaterialise and Shapeways. They are industry leading online 3D-printing bureau services.