How to Turn Virtual Designs into Physical Objects
The following is from a very well designed page and explanation at the Advanced Civilisation site, at http://www.adciv.org/Virtual_designs_into_physical_objects
Introduction
"Collaborative designs created on a computer can be physically forged range from getting your hands dirty and crafting it yourself, to sending the design, or at least parts of it, as an electronic file to an increasing number of flexible computer-controlled manufacturing systems such as rapid prototyping or advanced multi-axis CNC machines that can accurately create parts in 3D in a variety of materials."
Overview of Strategies
Material excerpted from http://www.adciv.org/Virtual_designs_into_physical_objects
Strategy 1: Making It Yourself
Craft the item yourself or in a group according to plans using your own skills and tools plus readily available 'off-the-shelf' components. 'How-to' step-by-step guides, sometimes with video, are increasingly being published on the internet for this kind of project.
Strategy 2: Local Custom Fabrication
Small-scale local engineering firms that will make custom items to order have always been around, often specialising certain materials and techniques.
Strategy 3: Mail Order Machining
"eMachineShop [1] takes custom fabrication a step further in terms of ease of use. The US-based company supplies a fairly simple computer-aided design program that once materials have been assigned to the geometric forms an automatic bill of materials can then be calculated. When the user is happy with the design and the price, the information is sent over the internet to eMachineShop where the parts are fabricated using the appropriate computer-controlled machinery. The finished parts are then mailed back to the user.
A related company is Pad2Pad [2] that provides a similar service for the creation of printed circuit boards (PCB). They also provide free design software that has circuit error-checking and costing built-in. When the design is completed it is sent electronically to the company who then fabricate the PCBs and return by post. They do not currently populate the boards with electronic components." (http://www.adciv.org/Virtual_designs_into_physical_objects)