Booleans Operation for 3D Printing?

# 1 26-11-2013 , 11:06 PM

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Hello all!

I have a question concerning booleans in use for 3D printing. I am wanting to take this alpha *see attached below* and use Shapeways to make a pendant for my girlfriend.

I have drawn out the curves in Illustrator so that the writing is a single expanded vector and the pendent is a single line, as well as the hole for the necklace loop. I have imported those curves but can't seem to figure out the best approach for the booleans procedure. I have tried using Bevel Plus on the pendent a few times and yielded decent results, although I couldn't seem to get a smooth NURBS mesh.

I would like to partially submerge an extruded handwriting in a pendent mesh and have a clean results. In the past, I have always cursed booleans because it never seemed like the results were 100% favorable.

Any advice how how to proceed? Thanks you much!
Josh

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# 2 26-11-2013 , 11:57 PM

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If you would upload the curves for the lettering I take a look

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton, 1675

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# 3 27-11-2013 , 12:42 AM

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I have been futzing with this and it's very touchy. Some fonts work, some do not. I can normally bend NURBs to my will but I can't seem to find a consistent workflow for this.

Once again if you care to upload your curve I'll see what I can conjure up. To be honest this exercise might be more suited to ZBRUSH.

As you intend to use this for STL printing the density of the mesh or topology is of little concern. The mesh just needs to be water tight. Just make it dense, boolean it, and remesh.

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton, 1675

Last edited by ctbram; 27-11-2013 at 08:38 AM.

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# 4 27-11-2013 , 03:47 PM

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Hello ctbram!

I have uploaded the Maya curves, I went through and cleaned up some of the unnecessary CV's.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/n4uemmoimj...t%20Outline.mb

Curious to see what you find, thanks!

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# 5 27-11-2013 , 04:17 PM

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thanks I will fiddle with them after work tonight.

cheers

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton, 1675

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# 6 28-11-2013 , 06:13 AM

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Join Date: Feb 2004

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One issue with your curves is that a few of them are not fully closed, which causes the bevel tool to balk.

I've attached the set of fixed curves.

Something that comes to mind on how to do this... If you create the meshes for the text and the pendant, then triangulate them, you can load them into MeshMixer. This will create a water-tight, smooth-blended mesh.

Take a look: https://www.meshmixer.com/

Attached Files

Pendant Outline.ma.zip (24.8 KB, 711 views)

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

Last edited by NextDesign; 28-11-2013 at 06:28 AM.

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# 7 28-11-2013 , 09:12 AM

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Okay I found a workflow that will work consistently for this. With ND's corrected curves the bevel plus works fine. Thanks ND.

I will make a recording of the process but it's 4am on Thanks Giving day so I need to go to sleep.

Here are the basic steps...

1. create a NURBS plane

2. project the curves onto the plane (you'll need two sets of curves. one set on the plane and the projected set above the plane

3. now trim away all the unneeded bits

You should now have the pendent plane with all the areas with the letters trimmed away.

4. now you can select the set of edges that are on the plane and do a bevel plus

5. finally just delete the caps of the letters and you will have your engraved letters.

It will make more sense when I record it. I'll try to get some time later today to do it. I have tested it and it seems to work I just need to pick the correct bevel style and I am to tired to do that now.

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton, 1675

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# 8 30-11-2013 , 11:40 PM

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Okay sorry for taking a while to get back to this. The holiday had me quite busy.

I am working up a video to show the workflow for this but it's a bit complicated as I need to point out quite a few potential issues.

Stay tuned.

Topics -

1. bevel plus extrude direction based on curve direction
2. thing that make bevel plus upset
3. nurbs trim and round
4. polygon and nurbs surface direction

Here is the result -

Some things to note. Because of the narrow script you cannot do much of a bevel at all without getting intersections which would give your STL application fits. So I had to pretty much bevel straight in.

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton, 1675

Last edited by ctbram; 01-12-2013 at 12:37 AM.

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# 9 01-12-2013 , 03:41 AM

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Okay here are the videos of the workflow to create engraved text using bevel plus and nurbs trims. It's three parts. In the first one I just go over some of the things to be aware of when using bevel plus and in parts 2a and 2b I go over the process of creating the nurbs parts.

I attached the Complete.ma file as well.

Cheers,
Rick

part 1:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JS13...fsm9_VLjnA2MvQ

part2a:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAbp...fsm9_VLjnA2MvQ

part 2b:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_ZQ...fsm9_VLjnA2MvQ

PS - reverse polygon surface direction was moved to the normals menu. Sorry I was looking for it where is originally was which was under the edit mesh menu. I rarely ever use the menu tabs as I find using them them too slow. I either use the marking menu's, hotkeys, or the shelf.

Also I do these pretty much on the fly without really planning anything out so I apologize if they are not polished and I yammer on too much.

Attached Files

Complete.zip (622.3 KB, 779 views)

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton, 1675

Last edited by ctbram; 03-12-2013 at 03:50 PM.

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# 10 03-12-2013 , 01:44 PM

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Posts: 5

Okay here are the videos of the workflow to create engraved text using bevel plus and nurbs trims. It's three parts. In the first one I just go over some of the things to be aware of when using bevel plus and in parts 2a and 2b I go over the process of creating the nurbs parts.

I attached the Complete.ma file as well.

Cheers,
Rick

part 1:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JS13...fsm9_VLjnA2MvQ

part2a:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAbp...fsm9_VLjnA2MvQ

part 2b:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_ZQ...fsm9_VLjnA2MvQ

PS - reverse polygon surface direction was moved to the normals menu. Sorry I was looking for it where is priginally was which was under the edit mesh menu. I rarely ever use the menu tabs as I find using them them too slow. I either use the marking menu's, hotkeys, or the shelf.

Also I do these pretty much on the fly without really planning anything out so I apologize if they are not polished and I yammer on too much.

Originally Posted by ctbram

Thank you so much for all of work surrounding this issue! I really appreciate it, and I am sure thatamny more will as well when searching for this process. Thank you again!

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Booleans Operation for 3D Printing?

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