I have designed some patterned wire structures which I would like to turn into 3D Prints. The problem is that there are so many joints that it would take me a very long time to prep the structure for printing in the usual way of building volume and then making it water tight.
I have had a look at T Splines but I don’t like the way it takes the decisions out of my hands to create the form. It is the detail of the pattern that makes the structures which I want to retain.
Any tips?
Hi Shane,
I’m guessing without seeing a model or reference image but ExtractIsocurve or Contour then Pipe may be what you’re looking for. This would allow you to produce curves and then pipes from them for printing, unless I’m misunderstanding.
If you don’t mind using Grasshopper, Cytoskeleton may help, or Exoskeleton if your curves are not from a surface.
The former is completely open-source and customizable, and there are open source implementations of the latter.
However, the simplest option might be to just pipe the curves as Brian suggests. This won’t give a single watertight surface unless you Boolean union it, which can be slow if you have millions of curves, but many 3d printing programs will actually handle overlapping closed volumes without any trouble.
Thanks BrianJ.
Thank Daniel, I have been waiting for an excuse to use grasshopper, now I have two.