Repair Bad Mesh or Change to NURBS?

Hello, Im currently trying to polish this model for 3D printing: Model For 3D Print.3dm (238.4 KB)

Im following this guide: https://design.umn.edu/current_students/leo/hall/documents/ScanCleanupRemodel.pdf

I joined the meshes and got almost no naked edges. Still the mesh is pretty bad according to the “checking”

The first step is to ExtractNonManifoldMeshEdges and delete them. This delete big chunks of my mesh, with holes that are impossible to fill automatically as the original shape of the model gets affected.

I wonder if it isnt simpler to just MeshtoNURBS, get a nice polysurface, and save that as STL file for 3D printing.

Thanks

Non-manifold edges are when more than two polygons in the mesh share an edge. This mesh has a lot of these due to all the interior polys. You would need to use the command ExtractMeshPart and delete all the interior polygonal faces first. In some sections you’ll also need to remodel some polys using the 3Dface command with Vertex Osnaps. I would not recommend MeshtoNurbs here as that will simply make a planar surface from each poly including those on the interior. I’d either use the extract mesh part>delete workflow or remodel it using planar srfs with the SrfPt command and Vertex Osnaps.