I love this software.

These are to be washers for the bolts on the end of a scale model flatcar. They are approx. 1.5" square.

Output from Moi3D as .STL files, then sent to Shapeways for RP output. These pieces will now become patterns to allow me to sandcast them in aluminum in my backyard foundry.

The perfect blend of old and new technologies!

Cheers,

Chris

PS-please please please Michael, don't let Alibre influence or change *anything* in Moi.

Hi Chris, that's a great result!

It's kind of almost like magic to send your design to shapeways and then later getting the actual part.

- Michael

Hi Michael. It's more like *science fiction*. Shapeways literally hits "print" on a special 3D printer to output these pieces. Something from nothing as I like to say.

It may not have the same eye candy appeal as the space ships and movie characters that most Moi3D users create, but it's the kind of thing that keeps 3D design engineering going.

Cheers!

C.

Was just talking with my brother about a possible home foundry. Must stop pouring lead in slippers!!!!!!!!!!!!! :o

Nice parts!
Few question, what material are printed parts?
What was the price for parts and what was the time of delivery?
Need to try that Shapeway service.

Thanks,

d3

I didn't realize they now have stainless steel. I'll have to order their material sample kit and give it a try.

I see they have tutorials for using various modeling programs, but not MoI. Any pointers on making a MoI file for Shapeway?

Ed

*****I didn't realize they now have stainless steel. I'll have to order their material sample kit and give it a try.
I see they have tutorials for using various modeling programs, but not MoI. Any pointers on making a MoI file for Shapeway?******

Hello Ed,

I recently uploaded a .STL file to Shapeways – that's the standard for prototyping I guess. On their site, they recommend pulling the .STL through Meshlab or Netfabb (Programs to do certain checks and repairs on vertices and normals) before you upload. I got some warnings from a MoI .STL file in Netfabb, but those were not critical. I'll also post the results, when printed.

btw: the sample kit is really worth the money – you just get a better feeling for the materials, you're designing for.

Greetings,
Sebastian

Hi Ed,

> Any pointers on making a MoI file for Shapeway?

The key thing is that you need to generate a completely closed solid STL result.

That means that you need the object to be a closed solid in MoI as well before exporting to STL format.

You can tell if an object is a closed solid or not by selecting it and then looking at the object type indicator in the properties panel here:



If that reads "Joined Srf" instead of "Solid" there, then that means your object is not fully closed. If that's the case you can set up the script from here on a shortcut key to highlight the unjoined edges to see where they are located at:
http://kyticka.webzdarma.cz/3d/moi/#SelectNaked

But if you want to get a solid result at the end, it tends to be easiest to maintain things a solids throughout your modeling process. So for example instead of building a lot of little individual surfaces and joining them together it can be easier to instead work on solid blocks and do booleans to carve things up, because a boolean between 2 solids will result in a solid as well.

- Michael

Also when you export to STL you may want to use the "Divide larger than" option in the export dialog to break down any larger polygons into a bit more regularly sized diced up pieces.

Here's an example of that type of thing:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=2833.5

You don't want to go too overboard with this because if you dice it up too finely it will create an enormous file size. But if you have some polygons that are spanning a large percentage distance of the model (like on a broad flat surface portion) it can be good to get them diced up into somewhat smaller fragments.

- Michael

****If that reads "Joined Srf" instead of "Solid" there, then that means your object is not fully closed.*****

Hello Michael,

that's a useful Info – Is there a way to recreate Solid from Surfaces for STL creation?
I guess, the fixing, I did afterwards in Netfabb wouldn't have been necessary if it was a solid. There were some "degenerated faces" -as they call it in NF- detected and I don't get where they came from, since it is a simple extrude – But no warnings, it wouldn't be printable: Neither in the software, nor from shapeways, so I guess It'll turn out alright.

Regards,
Sebastian

Hi Sebastian,

> that's a useful Info – Is there a way to recreate Solid
> from Surfaces for STL creation?

Yes - the Edit > Join command will do this.

If you have individual surfaces that are touching each other along common edges, you can use the Join command to glue them together. And if you have all edges in your model joined to another edge, that makes it into a solid.

In order to be joined surfaces have to have edges that are close to one another though - within 0.005 units apart. So you need to do things like construct surfaces from some common curve structure, if you just kind of eyeball things and draw 2 different curves to use as guides for creating the surfaces they may not be close enough to each other.


If you are working on individual surfaces, you'll probably want to try to join things up more on the earlier side as you work on it and not do something like only create a bunch of surfaces and only join them together at the end, it's kind of too easy to miss a piece that way.

But if possible more of workflow where you work with a solid and then carve off pieces off it keeping it more a solid the whole time tends to be better. You can still work with surfaces in this kind of workflow as well, just use Edit > Separate to break off surfaces for some temporary work, and then use Edit > Join to glue them back into a solid again before going to a different step.

- Michael

+++If you have individual surfaces that are touching each other along common edges, you can use the Join command to glue them together. And if you have all edges in your model joined to another edge, that makes it into a solid.+++

Aah, alright, I get it. So there's no special command, but joining all the sufaces will do that.

I just had a look into my file, and it was already a solid. So this "degeneratd face" thingy probably was just something to omit or I picked some mesh settings that were too coarse.

thanks!

Sebastian

Hi Sebastian,


> Aah, alright, I get it. So there's no special command, but
> joining all the sufaces will do that.

Yup!


> I just had a look into my file, and it was already a solid. So
> this "degeneratd face" thingy probably was just something
> to omit or I picked some mesh settings that were too coarse.

Yeah, you don't want to go too overboard with making a hugely dense mesh - but at the same time you don't want to be too stingy with too rough of one either.

When you save to a mesh format, there is a readout of the polygon count in the upper right area of the main window, here:



You only really need to get concerned about being too large in file size once that goes up over something like 100,000 faces.

On the other hand, you actually don't want to generate polygons that are extremely teeny tiny in size because the receiving application may decide to do stuff like fuse together vertices that are quite close to one another.

- Michael

There's also another STL viewer/inspector program here that you can use to load in and check the STL file:

http://www.materialise.com/MiniMagics

- Michael

Remember that Shapeways Servers love Millimeters! I can get a failed model with inches, then only reset to mm and the model is accepted... I have read on their site that the Shapeways printers work nativley in Meters, so keeping it Metric will help.

Very good tips, thanks!

The white piece is an ABS type of plastic. The grey is the same, but infused with aluminum powder.

HTH

Chris

Less than 10 days from sending the file to receiving my parts. Shapeways is located in THE NETHERLANDS! Better service than a shop down the road.

$10 per piece.

Not much. output as STL with a decent amount of polygons. Just don't go over 100k, or it will give their machine fits. LOL

> $10 per piece.

That's another thing that is amazing about this, that it has become so very inexpensive.

- Michael