Jump to content

Split Solid in two pieces


Recommended Posts

The cutter knife tool works well to split solids.

I think the erasure rubber does same by deleting parts of solids.

Meshes do not behave so well in VW in general.

The only way to convert a mesh directly into a generic solid I found,

is by Push/Pull Tool in second mode, if you can find a suitable Faces that you can

temporarily push about 1 cm out and back in again.

This will not work if the mesh is too complex or has any holes.

(In rare cases you can produce corrupt solids)

In that case you have to go into the mesh group's lose 3D Polygons and try to delete

double faces or close holes manually by adding new 3D Polygons.

If a mesh is ok and used in Add Solids, converting the Solid into a generic solid should

work too.

For STL or 3D printing the geometry has to be air/water tight,

so I would not risk anything by using Meshes in VW.

Link to comment

I think if you want a truly watertight form for printing I would do all your operations in NetFabb. It is designed for exactly what you're doing.

VW doesn't work well with meshes. It sounds like you added and subtracted elements from the mesh in VW which will likely result in non-watertight solids. VW thinks its doing it properly, but often generates hollow solids with many unseen geometry errors. These will cause issues when you go to 3d print.

Kevin

Link to comment
  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee
I think if you want a truly watertight form for printing I would do all your operations in NetFabb. It is designed for exactly what you're doing.

VW doesn't work well with meshes. It sounds like you added and subtracted elements from the mesh in VW which will likely result in non-watertight solids. VW thinks its doing it properly, but often generates hollow solids with many unseen geometry errors. These will cause issues when you go to 3d print.

Kevin

This is sound advice. (I stopped myself from saying "solid advice," and I feel I did the right thing ;) )

Even if you DO use Vectorworks' tools to split up a mesh, I almost always find I need to make the exported resulting model manifold (watertight) in a third party application after the fact. A brief guide on doing this here:

http://3daddfab.com/blog/index.php?/archives/10-Automatically-Repair-STL-Files-in-2-Minutes-with-netfabb.html

Link to comment

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...