The New 3D Printing Thread

There are several ways to do it, you can either re-size the model in a CAD package like design 123D which is what I cut my teeth on (unfortunately now defunct and out of support - but it still works fine so I continue to use it).  In there you have two options a simple scale option where you can just drag or specify the size you want (up or down), or a smart scale that allows you to stretch (or compress) the item in any plane.

The other choice is to use the scale option in the slicer of your choice, mine being Cura as its freeware as opposed to the other popular package Simply3D which is said to be better (i.e. offers more options at a potentially higher learning curve) which costs $100+ Personally I don't see too much difference in what they do, at least not enough to buy Simply 3D  , in Cura you have a scale option also, by default that scales uniformally across all planes, but this can be turned off.

As to the level of detail?  Well of course when you scale up potentially you can lose some detail, but it depends upon how much the model has in the first place, sometimes it lets you see some detail you couldn't in the original model as the model may have been designed superbly and scaled at its default the printers can't resolve the detail.  This model is one which I reckon will scale superbly probably to at least double its normal size if wanted and you have a printer capable of printing it that big (which I do now )

So ironically when printing something you can potentially lose detail if you shrink the print size rather than the other way round - weird world isn't it