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slic3r / Slic3r

Open Source toolpath generator for 3D printers
https://slic3r.org/
GNU Affero General Public License v3.0
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Idea for dealing with open meshes #2854

Open whosawhatsis opened 9 years ago

whosawhatsis commented 9 years ago

I was thinking that it might be nice, especially for the printing of things like vases, if the slicer was capable of handling open meshes without closing them by treating the mesh as a surface. The idea is that you would use the surface normals to determine where the outer surfaces should be, and create walls using the specified number of perimeters and top/bottom solid surfaces only where those faces exist. Because such a model doesn't have a clear inside/outside, you couldn't build infill within such a model, but you could use supports (as with the "infill only where needed" function) to support any features that need it. This would make it possible to create single-wall vases with multiple islands, multiple holes, sloping surfaces, non-horizontal and non-planar openings, etc. It would also make a lot of non-manifold models intended for animation (for example, with zero-thickness clothes and hair) printable, when trying to repair these holes in the usual way would leave the model looking wrong.

Does this sound possible?

alranel commented 9 years ago

It sounds possible, but lots of work for fitting it into the current architecture :)