Just having a computer that could handle working with relatively complex 3D models, not even visually but just via the terminal, would have been a tall order in

Just having a computer that could handle working with relatively complex 3D models, not even visually but just via the terminal, would have been a tall order in the 80s. Even getting the data from the computer to the printer would be tough. Floppies wouldn't store enough data for even modestly complex 3D model files. Parallel port? Would be painfully slow. But even if you get around those issues, the algorithms for transforming the 3D model into 2D layers that could be printed with the proper support structures and with minimal material used are extremely complicated and involved a lot of intermediate data during the calculations. Most machines then wouldn't have had even close the amount of RAM needed to do that in any reasonable amount of time.