I occasionally help an artist print sculptures that he has modeled in Blender.
The first sculpture was a wall motif, which was simply divided many times in my slicing software (Orca Slicer).
Now, we are facing the challenge of printing a much larger sculpture with complex shapes. This makes the process of subdividing the model in the slicer very tedious.
Trimming and dividing large meshes also doesn’t seem to work well in Rhino (at least based on my experience). Additionally, when using the classic QuadRemesh and Mesh to NURBS methods, some details get lost.
I was wondering if there might already be an existing Grasshopper program that automatically divides larger meshes into smaller ones (within the 3D printer’s volume) and possibly even inserts dowels or similar connectors.
Has anyone here already found a smart workaround for this?
Thank you for reading my post, and I’m really looking forward to hearing your thoughts.
I believe you are asking about workflows for separating a large mesh into smaller pieces for the purposes of 3D printing. This differs from the act of “subdividing” each face in a mesh into multiple faces. If my guess is correct, you’d need to use MeshBoolean commands in Rhino assuming your mesh is already closed. Shrinkwrap can also be used of course prior to these Booleans if needed. There is a Tri-Remesh component in Grasshopper that you might find useful but Shrinkwrap will be the most forgiving as a clean up step first. You can even use Shrinkwrap in GH combined with mesh Booleans or take a look at a GH plugin called Dendro (Win only) that is doing the same thing as Shrinkwrap but offers additional tools.
Post a small example with an explanation of what you are trying to do for more specific help.