Physical objects from A:M

[rijklau]

Hi all,

 

I've away from this forum for quite a while but never leave A:M. I am show some stuffs that I'm working on. You can take a look at here, all of the products are done with A:M and printed using 3D printing technology:

 

CGD - Shapeways

 

Just to proof that they are made in A:M, here are some screen captures.

[agep]

Cool stuff! Could you tell us about the process? I am planing on doing somthing like this myself. What kind of export pipeline did you do? I guess the models need to be "watertight"?

[rijklau]

Cool stuff! Could you tell us about the process? I am planing on doing somthing like this myself. What kind of export pipeline did you do? I guess the models need to be "watertight"?

 

Yes, the models needed to be watertight. Turn out to be achievable in A:M, just stitch close all holes and normal facing outside. I exported DXF to either Rhinio or AccuTrans 3D to export an STL file. Other free translaters probably work also.

[HomeSlice]

Welcome back rijklau! I remember you from a long time ago. You were making physical prototypes of AM models even back then. Glad to see you here again.

[pixelplucker]

When you export the files out they are still just sub-d poly models right?

How smooth does that translate? Usually people use solids or nurbs for that stuff.

 

I have Amapi Pro that can convert poly models into nurb brep surfaces, in some cases it works really well but does depend on the object. Booleaned shapes tend to get messy on conversion but continuous surfaces work nice. I can export out open nurbs, stl and iges from that.

[itsjustme]

Extremely cool, rijklau! Great work.

[rijklau]

Welcome back rijklau! I remember you from a long time ago. You were making physical prototypes of AM models even back then. Glad to see you here again.

 

 

Ghost from the past...

 

[rijklau]

When you export the files out they are still just sub-d poly models right?

How smooth does that translate? Usually people use solids or nurbs for that stuff.

 

I have Amapi Pro that can convert poly models into nurb brep surfaces, in some cases it works really well but does depend on the object. Booleaned shapes tend to get messy on conversion but continuous surfaces work nice. I can export out open nurbs, stl and iges from that.

 

To get smoother surfaces, I use setting of 16 during DXF export. Because of the scale of the objects I'm working on, they turned out to be quite smooth. I sometimes export the model in parts, say a box shape body using low poly count and wheels in high poly counts and combine them together in Rhino before exporting STL. I have some success doing boolean by importing the STL back into Rhino. It is very interesting that when Rhino import A:M DXF, it became one single object. But when re-importing the STL back into Rhino, it breaks down into individual parts as within A:M.

[pixelplucker]

I've had model files always export out as single meshes even as obj files.

 

AM probably reads them in as separate surfaces, I had few DXF files I exported out from AM and needed to weld them back together in Hexagon using a .0001" value because each patch was a single group.

[rijklau]

I've had model files always export out as single meshes even as obj files.

 

AM probably reads them in as separate surfaces, I had few DXF files I exported out from AM and needed to weld them back together in Hexagon using a .0001" value because each patch was a single group.

 

I did not have this problem. The most frequent problem I encountered is having two surfaces overlapping exactly and caused non-manifold errors, whatever that means.

[antonyw]

Hi, rijk

 

long time no see, do u remember me?? haha

 

Antony Wong

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hi all,

 

I've away from this forum for quite a while but never leave A:M. I am show some stuffs that I'm working on. You can take a look at here, all of the products are done with A:M and printed using 3D printing technology:

 

CGD - Shapeways

 

Just to proof that they are made in A:M, here are some screen captures.

[pixelplucker]

I believe manifold volumes use intersecting surfaces to create a shape within as if the surfaces were the outsides of a surface. So if there are double surfaces in the same space it would make sense to me why the error.