Need advice closing a solid to print w/ Solid Inspector
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SU2014 Maker (but I could get access to Pro if required) on Win7 PC.
Trying to 3D print a topographic map. I have an irregularly-shaped terrain surface (created from a TIN) that I'm trying to mount on a flat base for printing. One edge of the terrain gradually slopes to a height of zero and that appears to be where the solid isn't closing.
Here's the screenshot from Solid Inspector:
When I zoom in on each of these areas, I can't discern what the actual problem is. Any advice on getting this to work?
PS - because of the location and scale of the area we're looking at, most of the how-to-3D-print-a-topo-map instructions I've found online don't work. I've had to start with a contour line shapefile, create the TIN in ArcGIS (I didn't like how Sandbox created the TIN in SU14), export it as VRML and use Blender to convert to Collada for SU14. If anyone wants to comment on THAT process, I'd be happy to hear it!
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Welcome to the forum, Tomasz!
If the model is solid other than those holes, I recommend saving the file as an STL, and uploading to https://netfabb.azurewebsites.net/ You can then download the fixed file after a few minutes.
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What size is the model? If it is quite small it could be that SU is having problems with tiny faces and edges. Try scaling it up 10 or 100 times to work on it.
Try welding that edge together before sticking it to a flat surface.
You may have better luck giving it a skirt first and cutting that off flat.
Have a look for stray edges and lonely vertices.
There are a few plugins around that might help, Toposhape by Fredo, Add Terrain skirt by S D Mitch, Tig's CutnFill. Fredo's edge inspector lets you look closely at the edges.I'm also curious about the colour, are all your faces reversed? It looks like the default back face colour.
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@d12dozr said:
Welcome to the forum, Tomasz!
If the model is solid other than those holes, I recommend saving the file as an STL, and uploading to https://netfabb.azurewebsites.net/ You can then download the fixed file after a few minutes.
That netfabb thing will fix it for me?! I'll give that a shot!
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@box said:
What size is the model? If it is quite small it could be that SU is having problems with tiny faces and edges. Try scaling it up 10 or 100 times to work on it.
Quite the opposite - it's about 11km long. Based on my understanding of vector graphics, scale shouldn't make that much of an issue, should it?
@box said:
Try welding that edge together before sticking it to a flat surface.
You may have better luck giving it a skirt first and cutting that off flat.
Have a look for stray edges and lonely vertices.
There are a few plugins around that might help, Toposhape by Fredo, Add Terrain skirt by S D Mitch, Tig's CutnFill. Fredo's edge inspector lets you look closely at the edges.Will investigate some of these. Add Terrain skirt doesn't seem to work because SU doesn't recognize this as a terrain. I was able to use extrusion tools to pull the edges down in another iteration that failed for other reasons - I should revisit that.
@box said:
I'm also curious about the colour, are all your faces reversed? It looks like the default back face colour.
Thanks for this! I wasn't sure which was the reverse. Will fix that!
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@tmrozewski said:
Quite the opposite - it's about 11km long. Based on my understanding of vector graphics, scale shouldn't make that much of an issue, should it?
Scale can be a problem in both directions, too small and too large.
SU is basically an architectural design program and as such performs best at house type scale. At the two extremes you get problems with faces not forming and graphic issues such as clipping.Scaling down to something more "average" might help, after all I don't know of a 3D printer that can manage 11km.
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Thanks, Box.
I had run into issues when trying to scale down the model in Sketchup because the program would start to glitch after a few drag-and-shrink operations with the Scale tool - when I had it down to appropriate scale (25.4cm), the model would occasionally disappear from the display and wouldn't reappear when I tried to zoom or move the camera angle. This intermittent disappearance and reappearance would continue even after I had saved the file and then closed and reopened the program. If you have any better advice for shrinking the model down, I'm all ears!
WRT an 11km print, I was told that the 3D printer software can handle that part of the scaling if need be.
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I would fix the model before you scale it down.
To scale it down properly you can use the Tape measure tool. Measure the length or width that you need then enter the value you need in the VCB and hit Enter, it will scale it down to that value. It might take a while or even freeze, just wait for a while and I believe it will do it . -
Sounds like classic clipping plane issues.
You get this when you scale something down but the origin is a long way off in the distance.You need to get it down to scale and also reset the origin.
The tape tool is the best for resizing accurately. -
@box said:
Sounds like classic clipping plane issues.
You get this when you scale something down but the origin is a long way off in the distance.I understand what you're describing and have triggered this before, but this is different. It doesn't happen while the model is being scaled but afterwards, when viewing it and using different tools.
I'm not worried, though - the tape measure appears to have scaled it down this time without the error.
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@d12dozr said:
Welcome to the forum, Tomasz!
If the model is solid other than those holes, I recommend saving the file as an STL, and uploading to https://netfabb.azurewebsites.net/ You can then download the fixed file after a few minutes.
The netfabb tool didn't work - it just output this garbled bit:
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Clipping doesn't occur during scaling, it's one of those things that jump out at you when you least expect it and it can be quite difficult to find the reason.
Have a look at this model and see what happens when you try to orbit around it.
This is because this simple cube is 11km from the origin.
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nice magic cube
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Tomasz, can you upload the model so we can take a look at it? If you'd like to keep it private, you may PM it to me and I'll check it out.
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@d12dozr said:
Tomasz, can you upload the model so we can take a look at it? If you'd like to keep it private, you may PM it to me and I'll check it out.
PMed, thanks!
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@box said:
Clipping doesn't occur during scaling, it's one of those things that jump out at you when you least expect it and it can be quite difficult to find the reason.
Have a look at this model and see what happens when you try to orbit around it.
This is because this simple cube is 11km from the origin.Thanks for the demo, Box. I'll definitely keep that in mind in the future. I don't believe that was the cause or behaviour of the previous issue but, now that I've used the tape measure and this is no longer an issue, I'm not keen on replicating the bug - I'm having enough trouble trying to replicate successful practices!
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