Installing RepRap on your computer

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Revision as of 21:42, 6 November 2009 by Adrianbowyer (talk | contribs)
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Under construction.

Prerequisites

The RepRap software currently runs under 32-bit Linux or Microsoft Windows. We are working on adding Mac and 64-bit versions.

You will need Java on your computer. If you don't have it already, get it here:

You will also need to download and install the Arduino development environment to build the firmware for your RepRap machine. That is available here:

Finally in this prerequisites section, you will need to download and install the Sanguino add-ons for Arduino. Get them here:

RepRap Download

Download the RepRap distribution from Sourceforge:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/reprap/

There are a number of files and packages from the project available there, but the main download (which is about 65 MB) will have a name like reprap-nnnnnn-yyyymmdd.zip. This is the one file you want. It is the main Sourceforge download for RepRap; nnnnnn is the name of the current RepRap machine and yyyymmdd is the date of the release.

Linux Installation

You can install and use RepRap in your own file-space under Linux.

In your own space

Unzip the downloaded file:

$ unzip reprap-nnnnnn-yyyymmdd.zip

This will create a directory called reprap-nnnnnn-yyyymmdd (with the name of the current RepRap machine and the distribution date substituted, clearly). To run the RepRap software simply move to that directory and run the file named reprap:

$ cd reprap-nnnnnn-yyyymmdd
$ ./reprap

Installing for all users

If you want RepRap to be available system-wide to all users, you will need to log in as the superuser to install it.

Assume you downloaded reprap-nnnnnn-yyyymmdd.zip into the directory /xxx/yyy. Move to the directory /usr/local, then unpack it:

# cd /usr/local
# unzip /xxx/yyy/reprap-nnnnnn-yyyymmdd.zip

Then move to the /usr/local/bin directory and create a short shell script called reprap using your favourite text editor (gedit in the example).

# cd /usr/local/bin
# gedit reprap

Copy and paste these three lines into the script, then save it:

#!/bin/sh
cd /usr/local/reprap-nnnnnn-yyyymmdd
./reprap

(Don't forget to replace the nnnnnn and the yyyymmdd with the right strings for your distribution file.)

Finally, set execute permission on the file:

# chmod 755 reprap

Any user will now be able to run the software just by typing the command "reprap".

There is a RepRap teardrop symbol in the file /usr/local/reprap-nnnnnn-yyyymmdd/reprap-icon.png which you can use if you add the executable to your desktop or task-bar as a clickable executable.


Windows Installation