Watertight MESHES/Solid for 3d printing

[Anonymous]

Good Morning! 

I am new to the world of 3d printing/AutoCAD My company would like to print some of their AutoCAD models for display/PR purposes, however, most of the work we do is land survey/earth moving so the models are mainly terrain style simple stuff. I have been trying different combinations of thicken/apply surface and smooth mesh but no matter what I seem to try I am never able to get a successful 3d print command to run. it filters out a ton of the model and spits out error codes 1830,1826 and at least one other. Any help would be appreciated and bear with me as Autocad is not something I am overly familiar with. Thanks in advance!

[Alfred.NESWADBA]

Hi,

>> most of the work we do is land survey/earth

Are you using Civil3D to do this? If yes ... which version / if no ... please upload a sample dwg so we can see your drawings structure and let us no which version of AutoCAD you are using.

- alfred -

[Anonymous]

For right now I am using the trial version of Autodesk Autocad2021, ensuring we can make it work at all before any real money is spent, the actual users are using a civil version. 

I have attached 2 versions of the drawing, each in a different stage of the process but the original is the format directly from the AutoCAD team without any of my fiddling around.  

[Alfred.NESWADBA]

Hi,

>> For right now I am using the trial version of Autodesk Autocad2021

If you are testing and evaluating the right software for this job, then please test Civil 3D, not AutoCAD for such things.

With Civil 3D this is done in 1min ... see file attached.

And please do not save in an 10 year old file-format!

Please don't freeze layer 0!

- alfred -

[Anonymous]

I really appreciate this... I am sorry about the file format this is how our survey team gave it to me, would there be a quick rundown of the steps you did in civil that I could pass on to the team if it is not too much? 

[Alfred.NESWADBA]

Hi,

>> would there be a quick rundown of the steps you did in civil

The steps are:

• create a Civil 3D surface
• inside surface definitions add the triangles to the surface (so the surface has data)
• run command _AECCEXPORTSURFACETOSOLID to create a 3D-Solid

- alfred -