Boolean union & rapid prototiping

Hi!

I'm trying to do a boolean union joining a big amount of bars done by piping lines. I need one unique solid because I'm trying to export a .stl for 3D printing. It's determinant to have one solid. Boolean union component is not working well and I don't understand why. I've tried baking it into rhino and doing boolean union there and doesn't as well. Some times I achive one union between 2 bars but with this model it is totally unassumible.

The union doesn't works anyway. I've try it with a model wich each bar is one brep. Once with a model wich I pipe one long zig zag ployline. I converted it into meshes and using mesh union...but is still not working.

Anyone know wich can be the problem? Any help will be very very wellcome. It has to be in few days the model of my Diploma thesis.

Thx a lot!

Attachments:

2.jpg, 710 KB
Boolean.3dm, 81 KB
Boolean.ghx, 194 KB

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Dan Reynolds on July 11, 2011 at 12:18pm

This is pretty old, so I'm guessing you already had your diploma thesis, but I was getting the same error. I posted a test I made in a new error discussion. You can find it here if you are interested in following it: http://www.grasshopper3d.com/forum/topics/incorrect-solid-boolean

Permalink Reply by Gwyll on July 12, 2011 at 5:26pm

This might do what you want, the definition is also pretty outdated but it creates single solid meshes from line networks. Send me an email if you would like the definition.

Permalink Reply by Saied Zarrinmehr on July 13, 2012 at 12:15pm

Dear Marina,

I am experiencing exactly the same problem. Did you find a solution for that?

Thanks,

Saied.

Permalink Reply by Michael Makris on December 11, 2012 at 10:09pm

I continue to have a similar issue with combining Breps. I "Union" component does not union as it should. Sometimes it acts like "Difference" or "Intersection" while one or more of those components sometime act like union.

UPDATE it seems this may be fixed with Rhino 5, but I don't have it yet. I only bought Rhino 4 a few months ago and am feeling a little poor. David Rutten claims here that it's now fixed.

Permalink Reply by Saied Zarrinmehr on December 11, 2012 at 10:26pm

I tried to develop a VB battery to merge the Breps, but the merge function only accepts enumerable input and inside the VB battery you do not have the capability of turning a list or an array of Breps to enumerable.

I also backed my grasshopper model hoping to use union function directly in Rhino, but I kept receiving failure messages.

If you want to create an STL file and 3d-print your model, you do not need to unify them.

Permalink Reply by Michael Makris on December 11, 2012 at 10:37pm

Actually I'm the rare person here not trying to 3D print. I'm doing structural simulation with Scan&Solve and to do it, you need a solid Brep to bake to Rhino/mesh in rhino.

Permalink Reply by HS Chan on September 15, 2018 at 9:54pm

6 years later, have you solved this problem? I am doing very similar work. Try to make a customized python code to perform union of bars one by one. For complex geometry, it failed. Surprisingly, the code works for relatively simple geometry...

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