Hi Dane,

> EDIT: By the way I've been saving all my STLs with the maximum amount of polygons. That
> doesn't affect anything though, right? That just affects how many polygons are used on the
> surfaces in STL, right?

Yes, that's correct, that just controls the density when surfaces are diced up into triangles.

Sometimes it's also not a bad idea to use the additional "Divide larger than" option to force additional polygons to be created, like for your case here if you put in "Divide larger than" = 3 that will divide up polygons on curved surfaces if the polygons are larger than 3 units across. This can help to avoid getting really long and skinny triangles from being formed. You need to push the little down arrow in the bottom left corner of the meshing options dialog to see the "divide larger than" setting.


> So I downloaded V3 and attempted to union everything. It actually seemed to work and MOI
> is treating it as a single object when I select it.

I tried it with your attached file over here too and it seems to make a good result - it reads as a solid and I examined it a bit and could not see any obvious problems...


> There still seems to be seams along the legs and that is what caused a
> problem for the printer.

Do you mean you see the same problem with the new booleaned one you did in v3 ? Maybe it's possible your STL processing software does not like really long and skinny triangles, try putting in Divide larger than = 3 as described above and see if that makes it happier.


> Do I still have to make a hub for it to see this as one object in the STL file?

Nope, the hub thing was just if the tubes were refusing to get booleaned to one another directly. Crossing tubes can just be a difficult type of intersection calculation, but there have been some tuneups specifically for that in v3.

- Michael

Hi Dane

I find that when you have 4 tubes like that, that share a common top if you draw a line down the centre and cut across front and side views
When each meets at an exact surface they will union easily giving a nice clean solid.



When I draw jewellery and have printed , I do not join the individual parts , as long as they intersect each other the slicing programs are able to slice the stl file for printing.
The main problem is if you have duplicate objects on top of each other.

The slicing program for solidscape printers can handle non joined parts.


I am currently looking at a Kevvox resin printer that runs K studio which can join the parts as part of the print operation
I will let you know how I get on.

http://kevvox.com/3d-printers/sp-series/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzNDtwTYLMo

cheers
shayne

Hey guys,

So when I said that I had that problem with slicing it was in V2 and not in V3. The results that I got are attached.

So after doing the union in V3, I was able to print it and the finished results of that are also attached!

In regards to your answer Shayne, that looks like an awesome solution and would have and will be the solution I will use if I run into this in another form. I would have created a hub but I like your solution much better. With keeping the parts separate you never have problems with it treating items as separate when printed?

Thanks Mike and Shayne.

Regards,

Dane

Hi Dane, it turned out great!

I'm glad that the tune-ups in v3 were able to solve that problem.

- Michael

Just thought to add that if you make use of a 3D printing service like Shapeways, intersecting parts will be auto-Booleaned, so you don't need to do that yourself first.