About Us

NIH 3D is an open, comprehensive, and interactive website for searching, browsing, downloading, and sharing biomedical 3D print and visualization files, modeling tutorials, and educational material. "Biomedical" includes models of cells, bacteria, or viruses, molecules like proteins or DNA, anatomical models, prosthetics, medical devices, and custom lab equipment.

NIH 3D is a collaborative effort led by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in collaboration with the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute for Child Health and Human Development and the National Library of Medicine.

Our vision

We wanted more people to use 3D printing and visualization for science, but we couldn’t find a resource dedicated to that. The goal of NIH 3D is to provide that resource in order to facilitate the creation of and access to 3D models by the scientific community.

Our Mission

Our mission is dedicated to advancing the use of 3D printing and visualization in biomedical science and STEM education by providing a free repository of biomedical 3D models, and tools for creating and sharing 3D them.

Purpose

Few scientific 3D-printable models are available online, and the expertise required to generate and validate such models remains a barrier. NIH 3D eliminates this gap by providing an open, comprehensive, and interactive website for searching, browsing, downloading, and sharing biomedical 3D print and model files, modeling tutorials, and educational materials.

NIH 3D is unique because:

  • It is the only resource dedicated specifically to models for bioscientific 3D prints and visualization.
  • It is the first government-sponsored website dedicated to 3D printing and visualization.
  • It includes new, sophisticated, and free tools to convert scientific data into 3D objects in only minutes.