So I just created a set of pipes using grasshopper. I am trying to Boolean union all the randomly intersecting pipes together. Boolean union fails a lot though and sometimes moving the pipes by a slight amount works, but other times nothing will work. Are there any settings I could change or techniques I could use to make this process easier?
That jumble will probably always fail at some point - you can troubleshoot per failure by intersecting the objects and looking at the resulting curves. Most likely failures will be where the objects barely touch or are just barely tangent- what is the goal of unioning these? a 3d print, or?
-Pascal
So I just created a set of pipes using grasshopper. I am trying to Boolean union all the randomly intersecting pipes together. Boolean union fails a lot though, sometimes moving the pipes by a slight amount works, but other times nothing will work. Are there any settings I could change or techniques I could use to make this process easier?
The pipes I have boolean Unioned so far are the ones I have selected in the picture
It looks like you are dealing with a lot of self intersections too. One way to Boolean union all these pipes could be a Boolean split first into many segments and then a union bit by bit.
In case you are going to 3D print all this, you don’t even need to Boolean union the geometry. Just turn it into meshes and Netfabb will most probably join everything.
exactly correct, I was going to try to make a little art piece out of them after I 3d printed them and painted them black. I would do them one by one if possible, but since they’re all intersecting so much, it would be impossible to put together
Sorry, I’m not familiar with Nettfabb. Is it a plugin?
Who’s going to print this for you?
myself, I have a 12 X12 printer. I was going to just make it 100% fill since some of the pipes are so small
Export all pipes in one STL file and upload it to the Netfabb Online Service.
Maybe your printer software has the same feature embedded so you don’t even need to do this by yourself
