topic Re: Help to prepare a mesh for 3D printing in Fusion Design, Validate & Document Forum

Help to prepare a mesh for 3D printing

747skys — Sat, 13 Aug 2016 18:23:28 GMT

Hi All,

So, I am a newbie and need to understand more about what Fusion 360 can do to help with my project.

As per the uploaded jpg, I open a mesh that I downloaded and it is in this shell form. I need to be able

to 3D print this and I have to do two things: Make this form water tight and also smooth out all the

facets to a finer surface to pick up as much detail as the final model will be about an inch high.

Can someone please give me some direction as to how I go about this?

Thanks

Ken

Re: Help to prepare a mesh for 3D printing

TrippyLighting — Sat, 13 Aug 2016 18:46:51 GMT

Could you attach that mesh to your next post ?

My assumption is that you should be able to do all of that in the new mesh workspace in F360.

Re: Help to prepare a mesh for 3D printing

747skys — Sat, 13 Aug 2016 19:30:44 GMT

Here is the mesh file

Re: Help to prepare a mesh for 3D printing

TrippyLighting — Sat, 13 Aug 2016 19:56:06 GMT

That is a lot of detail for a 1" tall model. What sort of 3D printer do you intend on using ?

This mesh will unlikely print out of the box with any software. It contains open meshes, even in the 3DS file and the reds to be taken care of somehow.

Add to this that the 3DS file certainly was a nice quad mesh at some point but is now triangulated, even though that can be cleaned up in Blender.

If you are interested in quality I'd take a completely different approach.

Once you have nice quads, import all the small sub meshes into T-Splines in Fusion 360 and then into BReps. Then combine them or trim with the surface tools and then into a solid.

then you can create a .stl of a complete surface that should be printable.

Re: Help to prepare a mesh for 3D printing

747skys — Sat, 13 Aug 2016 20:02:03 GMT

Thanks for the reply and help. As a complete newbie to all this...you lost me with all the technical jargon. I've only just started using Blender and Fusion about 2 weeks ago.

I have a formlabs SLA printer that can print down to 25 micron layers, so smooth models is a must for that detail.

Perhaps you can recommend some tutorials that can fast track me to learn how to do what I want?

Thanks

Ken

Re: Help to prepare a mesh for 3D printing

TrippyLighting — Sat, 13 Aug 2016 20:21:25 GMT

Aha. Let me try a few things in the new mesh workspace. It might take a day to two.

Re: Help to prepare a mesh for 3D printing

747skys — Sat, 13 Aug 2016 20:23:06 GMT

I do have blender and can see the "quads" that you are talking about, but as soon as I import into Fusion, it makes the faces into triangles.

Re: Help to prepare a mesh for 3D printing

weshowe — Sat, 13 Aug 2016 22:18:00 GMT

I struggled trying to find where my screen snapshots are saved at and gave up. The first option in preferences (click on your name up top) for the Mesh section is "Triangulate Mesh Polygons". That is initially checked at installation. You want to uncheck it to keep the quads.

- Wes

Re: Help to prepare a mesh for 3D printing

weshowe — Sat, 13 Aug 2016 22:26:33 GMT

I would like to also add that Fusion is at its best creating new designs for 3D printing, as opposed to struggling with a mesh from elsewhere. If you take advantage of the parametric design tools built in, you can make parts for your 3D work with whatever level of precision you want, and be able to change aspects of your design in ways you could only imagine using mesh modelling tools like you have.

What I am saying is that you are missing the best features in Fusion by trying to "fix" this mesh up. Use it as a guide to make a new project from.

- Wes

Re: Help to prepare a mesh for 3D printing

TrippyLighting — Sat, 13 Aug 2016 22:48:59 GMT

The mesh a hand is not a bad mesh.

It originated in 3DS Max and was mostly (95+%) a quad mesh. However it got triangulated somewhere, which is a shame as it takes additional work in another application to clean it up.

I've been able to clean it up enough in Blender to import into Fusion 360 and make T-Splines out of it.

The way this was modeled, however, was for rendering only, not for 3D printing.

All the sub meshes in this design are open surfaces that intersect on another. Making a homogenous surface out of this which does not get rejected b a 3D slicer might be THE challenge and involves a lot of work.

I wonder where where it is advertized that you can just download any form of mesh and 3D print it. Iv'e seen that so often on this Forum to believe this is a conincidence.

It is illusory to expect from someone with 2 weeks experience in Blender as well as in Fusion and likely computer graphics terminology to even begin to know what to to do. That is not easily conveyed into a simple tutorial. IF I find a good workflow I might make one to show the general idea.

Just to be clear, one can perfectly fine import a high quality quad mesh into Fusion 360, turn it into a T-Spline, from there into a solid body, add mechanical features and then 3D print it. I've done this myself. However, that requires a solid understanding of what characteristics a mesh needs to have in order for that to work.

Re: Help to prepare a mesh for 3D printing

747skys — Sat, 13 Aug 2016 22:57:54 GMT

Thanks for the input. The mesh was purchased, and not free and I intend to be doing quite a lot of this type of work. I only bought this one example to see how I could work with it for making the 3D models I need. You are correct, that the author made the graphic for use in games or other graphic uses and not for printing.

My problem is that I really do need the models printed and the effort to clean them would probably take a shorter time than for me to start making my own from scratch as I'm currently looking at several hundreds of these parts.

If I can just learn the proper steps at cleaning up the meshes, then I'm sure it would apply to any new ones that I purchase.

Re: Help to prepare a mesh for 3D printing

747skys — Sun, 14 Aug 2016 00:10:40 GMT

Here is a real kicker...I just tried to import the mesh right into the
software for the printer, and it automatically repaired the mesh and
printed just fine.

It would be great to know how to work with these meshes anyway for the
future and for possibly making new designs of my own, so I really do
appreciate all the advice received here.

Re: Help to prepare a mesh for 3D printing

747skys — Sun, 14 Aug 2016 00:12:41 GMT

Here is the shot of the repaired file.

Re: Help to prepare a mesh for 3D printing

TrippyLighting — Sun, 14 Aug 2016 00:17:04 GMT

In that case the level detail provide by the faceted mesh is enough or a 1" tall object.

If' you'd print it in say, 5" tall with the same printer you might start to se faceting and visible artifacts. Glad this worked out for you.

As far as mesh repair goes. I repaired/closed your mesh successfully in both Meshmixer and the mesh workspace in Fusion 360.

On my 27" monitor the detail level just did not look like what you might want.

Re: Help to prepare a mesh for 3D printing

747skys — Sun, 14 Aug 2016 00:16:55 GMT

Well I actually used blender first to subdivide the model 2x before I sent
to the printer.

Re: Help to prepare a mesh for 3D printing

TrippyLighting — Sun, 14 Aug 2016 00:17:55 GMT

I did that as well before I imported it in F360 and Meshmixer.

Re: Help to prepare a mesh for 3D printing

747skys — Sun, 14 Aug 2016 00:20:55 GMT

Thanks again for the help. Very appreciated.