Dividing a Brep in equal areas based along curve

Grasshopper
,
1

Hello,
I am working on a 3D printing project and need to divide a brep along a curves perpendicular plane (to oriant that peice on the table later).

The constraint is the area of the surface. I have a 15kg spool which means I can print around 0.36m2 surface. I need to divide the brep into almost equal surface areas so I can print them into batches of 15kg.
let me know if someone has worked on this before or has a solution.

Divide by area.gh (175.9 KB)
I have tried to expain this with an image so that we can understand better.

image
image885Ă—658 72.2 KB

2

is this going to be printed with “classic” parallel slicing? (meaning the printing path is always planar and lies on a plane parallel to XY? )

or are you printing this with some kind of robotic arm that can rotate in 3D its nozzle?

3

Robotic Arm - 8Axis

4

my first thought, because this Brep is indeed a perfect untrimmed surface, is to Isocurve it to a super high density, and create those 6 groups by total sum of isocurve lengths

this should save you MUCH time because you are not dealing with a 3D thing anymore, and if curves are dense enough (in the order of like thousands I guess) it should not make a real difference? :slight_smile:

something like this:

but the best way is probably to slice it first, in such a way you get the real 3D-printing path-curves, and at that point divide those paths into 6 groups with same total lengths?
are you going to have fixed or variable extrusion-rate?

all these questions are to just avoid the classic galapagos thing that moves up and down, but that’s a way too :slight_smile:

[edit] well, looks like my first thought was indeed wrong… because the resulting areas -despite the calculation being pretty fast- are off by like 1%

(more time could be saved by not Replacing Paths and just get the first of each value changes… but that’s just a detail in a basically flawed situation…)

image
image1799Ă—756 188 KB

Divide by area_inno.gh (44.4 KB)

5

The 3D in the file is a simplified verson of what I need to print. Also making the toolpath like this does not really work with my printng configeration.
I need to divide the this peice by surface area and then slice them individualy with our customised slicer.

6

Hi @inno thanks for the definition, but it only works on a surface and not on a Brep. I need to do this operation on a refrenced brep with multiple joined surfaces. Let me know if you find an alternative using breps..

image
image1851Ă—688 86.3 KB

7

Hey @inno

With a litlle bit of replacemnts I got what I need. Thanks for the definition. I am attaching the GH below for a refrenced brep.
I also add a phyton code to convert the area to kg with density and thickness

image
image1670Ă—440 63.6 KB

Divide by area_innoV2.gh (43.4 KB)

8

happy you liked the “principle” and found your way through it! :+1: nice changes you have done! :clap:

as much as I like Galapagos, splitting that brep a zillion times would have taken hours of optimization :smiley:

9

That was my first thought but did not dare to burn my PC :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes: