Then press the ‘Insert AutoCAD File’ button ( ) to import the vectorial drawing you want to use as a cutting pattern on the surface (You can also import other types of files or draw something directly on the sketch plane). We are creating a simple cube (Primitive Box) and choosing one of its faces as 2D Sketch plane ( ). This confers aesthetic factors while reducing the amount of material and therefore the costs of the product. In many examples of successful 3D printed products, we have seen designers taking advantage of this production driven restriction, creating patterns of cavities along the whole model surface.
You can upload your 3D file and try it now. Sculpteo has released a fabulous hollowing feature that allows you to do this operation online, simply by choosing the position of the holes on your model. The reason is related to the technology: “unprinted” material would be trapped inside your model with no way for it to escape. Making your object hollow will then strongly affect your product costs, sometimes decreasing it by up to 60 or 70%.Īnother important reason to hollow your model is to keep your product lightweight if that’s a factor you are aiming for.īut just hollowing your model doesn’t affect your product if your hollowed part is not connected to the outside through at least two holes. In 3D printing, unlike common production techniques, the cost to fabricate an object is not dictated by its shape complexity, but mainly by the amount of material that it requires. There are several reasons why digital models for 3D printing should be hollowed but the main one regards the amount of material used to produce it. To join two solids into one (And obtain one shell when meshed), the command ‘Combine’ is needed (Press the command>Select bodies to be joined>choose Join, Cut, or Intersect>press ‘Apply’). Otherwise, selecting ‘New solid’ when creating a new feature, produces what will be recognized as a separate shell in the mesh.
Once again, the software automates this process, and each time we create a new feature on the working model, a joining option can be chosen (Join Cut or Intersect ). The third important requirement is to have each separate part of our model made of just one shell.
That which is mathematically full within the solid is defined as the internal area and there is no reason to manually define it. If this message appears, all we need to do in order to obtain a solid that is exportable as a manifold mesh, is to stitch these surfaces together using the command ‘Stitch’ (Press the command>select the surfaces>press ‘Apply’>press ‘Done’).Īs for the orientation of the mesh, the inside and outside of a solid model are automatically determined. If the element in Inventor is not a solid, the 3D Print Preview won’t allow us to export the model and will produce this message: stl file or if surfaces are created directly in Inventor. That type of problem can occur if a model is imported from another software, and then its converted to a. It’s easy to recognize when your imported model is made of a solid or multiple surfaces because multiple surfaces do not look the same – they have a slightly transparent shade by default. A solid in Inventor always produces this type of mesh if it doesn’t, that means your current model is not yet a solid but a group of surfaces. Manifold essentially means that your mesh needs to be completely closed (Or ‘watertight’) and that each of its edges needs to be shared with two polygons. We recommend modeling with Autodesk Inventor as these characteristics are easily attainable. The most important characteristics for a 3D printing mesh (also the most common errors for non-printable meshes) are that must be manifold, oriented, and made of single shell parts. Mesh files are not necessarily used for 3D printing, so it is important to use characteristics that function with the program you plan on using it for, whether that be rendering, animation, or 3D printing.