Is there a test for suitability for 3D printing?

Rhino Rhino for Windows
1

Is there a plug-in or analysis command that I can use to check whether or not my 3D model is suitable for printing?

I guess that what I am looking for is whether the object is an airtight solid or not. Simple visual inspection may not be enough since I have a bunch of interconnected pipes and it is not possible to look inside.

2

Hello- see http://wiki.mcneel.com/rhino/faqclosedsolids

-Pascal

3

Hi Pascal,

At that page and more in particular in this page it links to:
http://wiki.mcneel.com/rhino/meshfaq

I see no mention of the Mesh Repair wizard.
Both pages are IMO rather unstructured in information and lack readability.
They are - I think - quite old and could use quite a few additions

The http://wiki.mcneel.com/rhino/faqclosedsolids immediately mentions STL files
yet that is merely a sub-topic of Solids in general. This page http://wiki.mcneel.com/rhino/soliddiscussion
would be more of a faqsolids.

I know resources are not abundant but a good updated writing on Rhino’s concept of solids and the subsequent issues with exporting 3D printing and other related information would be good to have.

  • solid editing tools
  • mesh repairing
  • exporting to various “solid” formats

During my teaching I found this (solid vs surface) to be an issue that always needed to be cleared at one point or another.

-Willem

4

I have been non-stop 3d printing complex arch models for the last 3 months. Although Rhino is a great tool you might discover that the software used to speak to the printer is a better indicator of printing success. With ours you can run a section line through the model and see the cut (layer) in plan, Openings are obvious.

we are printing on a projet170 (formerly zcorp) 3dedit pro is the prep software and the controller software is called 3Dprint (amazing branding over there.)

A

5

I stumbled across this document. It refers to Rhino 3 and is therefore rather old, and the document is very long, but perhaps it is still useful.

"Preparing Rhino files for 3D Printing"
http://design.umn.edu/current_students/leo/hall/documents/Rhino_3DP_prep.pdf

6

That is a nice find!
The document might be outdated at some points and lacks the addition of possible new features
but for an understanding of the matter it is a very good start IMO.

-Willem

7

Well, since that document is from McNeel Miami originally and as Andres is the @RhinoFabLab guy, maybe they have something more recent…? Most of that info is gleaned from the Rhino Help and Wiki, including comments from both you and me… :smile: I did a revision of the wiki article awhile back, so it’s more recent than the document.

–Mitch