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Summary
Had an idea for a way to print something flat, but then fold it up into the intended 3D shape. Should work well with anything conical/column-like, including, say, wings!
EDIT: I made a wing using this technique, which I've take to calling Flat-Roll... Here it is: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:483 (I kinda forgot to make it a derivative of this one, not used to that feature working again)
This rests on the notion (or hope?) that if you print something sufficiently thin, it will bend without snapping. (Might need to heat the piece?) If this is true, you can split your 3D shape into flat sections and unroll it, print it, and then roll it back up.
This may not be the best way to do this, but I connected each section in this first experiment with just a face, no thickness... I'm hoping Skeinforge will automatically print that with the thinnest layer it can, but I don't really know.
EDIT2: Nophead returned some experience and pointed out that zero-thickness faces won't print at all. Luckily, this is easily fixable since that big, flat underside is easily adjustable with a push-pull or extrude command in most CAD programs. Here's a variation that shows this: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:485
EDIT3: Jay Swift pointed out that you could print this out onto a sheet of flexible plastic without adjusting the thickness at all. You would then trim the sheet prior to rolling the whole thing up.
If this is workable, future improvements would include centering pins on the contact faces between each section... perhaps even some kind of latching mechanism.
Instructions
Once printed, this piece should be rollable into a heptagonal column, as per the screenshots from Sketchup.
By the way, I confirm Sketchup has all the required snap tools ;-)
Oh, and just as an FYI for those who don't know, the easy/free way to get a model from Sketchup into Blender: export as a Google Earth object, change the extension of the saved file to .zip, open the archive, retrieve the .dae file in the 'models' subdir and import that into Blender using the 'import Collada 1.4' option.
