Hi there, I have created an iPhone case in Cinema 4D. It consists of multiple objects so I thought I’d ‘Connect and Delete’ all of them and thought it would work. Obviously not. When I export the model as an .stl, I import it into Z-Suite and prep it for print but a part of the case is missing. Everything looks fine up until I press ‘Print’. Can anyone help?
Enza3D
2
Can you upload some screenshots of the model, ideally one before exporting from Cinema 4D and one of the exported stl? It’s hard to diagnose a problem without an image, or a really detailed description of the model and exactly what’s going wrong.
Based on what you’re saying about the model looking fine until you hit “Print”, I’d guess that there are features on the model that are too small and the slicer bypasses them. Z-Suite is a slicing program, so all it does is take your model and chop it the hundreds or thousands of 2D layers that your printer will create and “stack” to form a 3D object. A slicer will ignore all features that are smaller/thinner than the diameter of your extrusion nozzle due to the physical limitations of your printer. For example, if you have a 0.4 mm nozzle, the slicer will ignore any features that are smaller than 0.4 mm because the printer physically can’t print them well. You may be able to get away with features that are a little bit smaller than the nozzle width (like 0.35 mm thickness out of a 0.4 mm nozzle) or force the slicer to include them, but those specific features may not come out well.
I’d put my money on this being the problem, but just to be sure, you can also open the exported stl in a mesh editing program, like Meshmixer (it’s free and works well). If it looks fine in that program, then it’s most likely a thickness issue in certain parts of the model that the slicer is ignoring.
Hi Enza3D, thanks for replying. Here’s the case, it’s just a bunch of triangles on the back of the case. But as you can see in the print simulation, there’s a gap separating the back from the rest of it. I have dealt with lines being too thin before but I don’t think that is the problem. All I did was add my design to the back of a basic case I downloaded. I have also printed the case on it’s own to test it out and it worked fine.
Enza3D
4
When you made the model, how did you add the triangles? Were they individually placed, or were they all together as a separate mesh that was then “joined” with the phone case model?
I would suggest opening the model in a 3D editing software and checking for non-manifold or intersecting features. Technically, intersecting features are not non-manifold, but they often get grouped in that category of issues. Both of these are a trickier to find than walls being too thin or a part with holes because they are not always apparent and default inspection tools within editing software have harder times catching them.
Enabling wire-frame mode within Meshmixer or Blender will help you catch intersecting edges, as well as making the part transparent. I would check for intersecting features first, especially if you joined two models together to create the final part. If faces intersect, the slicer doesn’t know how to calculate the volume at the points of intersection and will more often than not just remove the regions where the intersection is occurring. This can be repaired with by using Boolean operations, or you can do it in Cinema 4D (I’m not that familiar with that program so can’t help much there).
Non-manifold features are very annoying to correct, but this happens when you have disconnected edges or vertices, internal faces and/or areas with no thickness. Depending on what went wrong, it could take minutes or hours to correct a non-manifold issue. I doubt you have disconnected edges/vertices or areas with no thickness/infinitely thin, so I’d check for internal faces and delete them if you find them, then repair any gaps that may form as a result of the deleted face.
First the triangles were just Illustrator files that I imported into Cinema 4D and then made into objects. All I did was just put the design on the back so there probably will be intersecting faces because my design had a hard edge around and the case was rounded so I just joined it to the straight edge before the curve started. But I guess I’ll just have to join them together by creating polygons between them which will be annoying. Thank you for your help Enza3D, much appreciated.
Enza3D
6
It’s no problem at all, hopefully your issue won’t be too tricky to solve!
reemaj
7
You can repair non-manifold and wall thickness issues automatically to save time. Try using an online repair solution such as https://makeprintable.com/ or other options Netfabb and meshmixer. That way you will be able to fix any issues that your model might have.
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