STL mesh doesn't look anything like rhino model.. completely lost

So i am trying to 3d print a model, and once I extract the STL mesh… it doesn’t look anything like the model… So far I have tried :

  • Checking watertightness of model - edge analyses + bad objects + select open polisrf – all good no issue - nothing open

  • I have moved model to origin

  • i have divided model into smaller components and tried exporting these as meshes individually

  • tried several combinations in the “polygon mesh detailed options” menu – all as suggested in tutorials Tutorial: 3D Printing with Rhino | 3D Printing Blog | i.materialise

I am getting the most random meshes… see images attached - what am i doing wrong ?

Thank you in advance
E

Very strange indeed, but without the file this will be almost impossible to debug.

thank you, i am messaging you the file…

I suspect your object is either very far from the World origin, or is very small compared to the file units/tolerance - or both.

thanks for the reply… i have moved to 0… prior to attempting meshing… units are millimetres… overall size of model 150mm x 150mm x 75mm - see image of polygon mesh detailed options menus…

OK, impossible to say without having the model then…

hi mate,

thank you so much for offering advice… please see link to model…

Hi

Your object is positioned way off from the origin.
I see you placed it on the TopView Cplane origin, however that Cplane itself is not at world Origin.

image

If you move it to the coordinate “w0,0,0” to override the Cplane origin I suspect you will get better meshing results

As a sidenote, I think the booleans were not easy either because of the far-from-origin issue.

Does this help?
-Willem

Thank you, I hadn’t realised I was so far off origin… it has improved the mesh a bit, but still far from intended result… what else could it be… ?

Hello- there is at least one intersection failure in this file

RH-78723 SSX is incomplete

I’ll see if I can sort out what you can do about it.

@EV80 see the attached file - replace the corresponding objects in your file with the blue ones in my file, then try the BooleanDifference.
The change I made to these objects, in case you want to do it yourself, is

Isolate them
Explode
One by one, select the surfaces that form the wedge shape - the two that make a knife edge, InsertKnot > Direction =V and click on Automatic once then Enter.

Join all the surface back and now Boolean.
Cutters.3dm (368.1 KB)

-Pascal

Hi Pascal,

Thank yo so much for your help. It worked!

Cheers
Erat

Do you try a 3MF export ? I do that directly with my Prusa printer.