Preparing my Mandala for 3D Print

Hi together,

i made a program in Grasshopper to create an Mandala. It consists only of single lines when it comes out of grasshopper. Then I thought it would be fun, to have it 3d printed.
So i made an offset of the lines (even to both sides) with the intention to extrude and cap. But it is not that easy and I really struggle with that.

How would you create a Brep out of those lines?
The closest I got was with the new SubD tools, but I dont want it round and high poly.

Greetings,
Max

mandala generator.gh (23.6 KB) Mandala.3dm (13.5 MB) mandala_3dprint.gh (8.4 KB)

Maybe something from this thread might help you:

Try the dendro plugin or Cocoon.

These let you thicken lines into a mesh which will export easily as a STL.

If you want a flat base for FDM 3d printers then you could cut it with the XY plane.

Hi,

thanks for your answers, Cocoon and Dendro looks interesting, will have a look into this.

Tried Pufferfish so far, that gives me the node “Parameter Pipe Mesh” which does already a good job. The Mesh is not perfect, but the PrusaSlicer works well with the stl

made a test already and move on to a more comples mandala now


1 Like

If Pufferfish works with your printer, use it.

There was another way to thicken the pattern in 2D, it is the offset. The best Offset tool to do that is Clipper here from Studio Avw


As this tool works with Integer and not double/float you need to put a tolerance that is some order of magnitude lower than the size of your drawing.