How best to merge models?

Dear forum,

For a school project here in Sweden I have been merging 3d models, from Thingiverse, in Rhino. I did this by opening the first model, then with File-> Insert add Another after which I dragged them so that they visualy merged. I did this with up to 7 models at a time.

Running the command SelOpenSrf works fine (no objects added) but Edge Analysis comes up with countless naked and non-manifold edges. Then I also tried BooleanUnion and MeshBooleanUnion, but still naked and non-manifold edges.

So my question is: how to merge 3d models in Rhino and make them ready for 3d printing.

Thanks in advance for any possible help!

Kind regards from Umea, Sweden (first snowfall today),

Douwe

Hi Douwe,

There could be a whole host of problems, are you able to upload the file for people to take a look at?

Sounds like they are all mesh models, so SelOpenSrf won’t select anything. They sound like typical bad downloaded files, you may be able to fix some of it in Rhino but I would recommend a dedicated mesh fixing tool like MeshLab or Netfabb.

–Mitch

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Dear 2DCube,

Thanks for your answer. Can’t access the file today but I will upload it tomorrow!

Best, Douwe

Thanks Mitch. That gives me some more insight into my doings. I will upload an example file tomorrow, so if you have any spare time maybe you could peek at it. Thanks anyhow, Douwe

Dear Mitch and 2d Cube,

I got the problems fixed by using Meshlab and flatten the layers. Great, thanks. There is still something strange with the heart shape in the model though, because it is black instead of having a normal rendering. Any idea why? I put the model here if you wanna take a look at it: https://www.dropbox.com/s/868v810htgo4zl9/For%20Loes%202%20Printable.stl?dl=0

Much appreciated your help already! Douwe

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Hi Douwe - the heart has inward pointing normals- use the Dir command to see this, and Flip to fix it (or click on the object while in Dir to flip the normals. Don’t forget to Enter to exit Dir, so that the changes stick.

-Pascal

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Thanks for your help Pascal!