3d printing.

Has anyone figured out how to output a grasshopper design to be printed with a 3d printer? Any direction would be helpful.

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by David Wood on May 19, 2010 at 7:28am

What specifically about the workflow do you need to know? How familiar with 3D printing are you?

Permalink Reply by China Blue on May 19, 2010 at 8:04am

David:
I need to know what the processes are to create a stl that I can bring into my Maker cupcake printer. I tried to make a stl file directly from rhino after creating a Grasshopper loft, but it seems to have saved the Rhino solid not the grasshopper lofted elements (I created a solid and mapped lofted hexes around it). Attached are the 3dm and the ghx files. I think I am missing a step.
I also will have to slice the object up before printing because it is too tall for my printer and Rhino will not allow that...I definately must be missing a step.
Any help woud be appreciated.

Attachments:

icosahedral symmetry.3dm, 163 KB
Honeycomb2surfacesV2.ghx, 195 KB

Permalink Reply by Daniel Piker on May 19, 2010 at 1:27pm

You need to bake the geometry (the fried egg looking icon - (though I guess it must actually be a baked egg!) )into Rhino to be able to save your output as an stl.
You may still need to make sure you have a good watertight manifold mesh, but this isn't really a grasshopper issue. I'd recommend looking on the shapeways forums - lots of Rhino users there experienced in making models printable.

3d prints from grasshopper created geometry are definitely possible - here's one I just did recently :)

Permalink Reply by China Blue on May 19, 2010 at 3:28pm

That worked! Thanks! But what is a watertight manifold mesh?
Love the shape you made.

Permalink Reply by robert cervellione on May 19, 2010 at 6:56pm

a water tight non- manifold mesh can be difficult to make manually if you have a lot of elements. basically watertight means you cannot have open edges or split vertices (if you filled the model with water it would not leak)

as for non manifold, for 3d printing that usually means you cannot have any interior faces, everything must be perfectly Booleaned together.

i use a program called Magics RP which can fix and create a perfect printable model.

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