Hi,
I'm trying two existing STL files. They are intended to be printed separately and then connected together, but I wan to print them as one.
So far I've imported both into Fusion as meshes and generated face groups. But after a lot of searching I stil havent found the correct way to align the two pieces so that they connect. How can I achieve that?
I think the image below speaks for itself.
There are several different ways to do that.
ETFrench
If you are just going to 3d print this, then the facets don't matter. You can use a joint to position them even with the facets after converting them to solid:
Converting them to solid using Parametric/Prismatic also works but sometimes it doesn't remove all of the facets and sometimes it does.
ETFrench
@etfrench wrote:
Converting them to solid using Parametric/Prismatic also works but sometimes it doesn't remove all of the facets and sometimes it does.
The faces don't combine because they are not coplanar. This means the very simple geometry of this imported mesh is garbage!
Select the midpoints of the faces instead of the edges. This image shows the currently selected joint origin which will only allow the pieces to be rotated around that edge:
Selecting the midpoint origin allows the components to be flipped and rotated to the correct position.
ETFrench
The results aren't consistent, which one would expect given the same inputs. I think garbage may be a little strong but accurate😁 Fortunately, it probably won't show when 3d printed:
ETFrench
They are garbage from the viewpoint of CAD modeling software.
Under the hood, CAD software represents geometry in the form of analytic geometry and NURBS surfaces. In most parametric solid modeling software those are stitched into BRep. Those are mathematical representations of geometry with topology and without limited resolution.
Triangulated meshes, on the other hand, have a finite resolution. When exporting CAD geometry into a triangulated mesh, the mathematical description and precision are lost. While such meshes visually still show remnants of topology they are difficult and often impossible to turn back into real CAD geometry.
Scanned meshes lack any topology information!
The goal of most of Fusion's mesh tools is to convert a mesh into solid or NURBS surface geometry.
The prismatic conversion does a fine job in this case because this is a very simple prismatic geometry.
The faceted conversion, as the name suggests, turns every triangle into a flat face. When in the solid tab, You can try to delete individual faces. Fusion will then attempt to auto-repair and merge adjacent faces that are coplanar into one cohesive face.
It works fine with one of these mesh objects; it doesn't with the other because the mesh lacks the necessary precision.
The reason for this is NOT that it was modeled in Blender. This shape can be modeled precisely in Blender. I doubt the person modeling this in Blender wanted to convert it into a solid model in Fusion, just to turn around and convert it back into a triangulated model for 3D printing.
Making one cohesive mesh from the two objects is also very simple to do in Blender 😉
Can you share those .stl files?
Do you have access to the original Blender file?
You might have to zip those before attaching them to a post.
Blender is vast, and that can make it confusing and challenging to learn. However, if the input to a design process is a triangulated mesh and the output is for 3D printing, which also usually generates triangulated meshes, then I would do this in Blender, as I show in the screencast.
