hi
just a quick question.
when modeling for print does the model need to be one complete object?
what i mean is can u use multiple objects that intersect each other or do you need to weld the geometry together?
One watertight manifold object. No holes, no self intersection.
Agreed, that self intersection is usually what causes problems for slicers.
im building a car trailer that im going to get printed as a keyring which is really hard to connect all the separate parts without bad geometry which takes a bit of work to fix.
Although the previous posters are technically correct, there are other alternatives. One is to use a new pre-processing tool from Autodesk called Project Miller (https://beta.autodesk.com/callout/?callid=1CCF3BABDF7C49B4A1A043527265EED6) which can resurface your STL models with a single skin.
An even better solution, IMHO, is the latest version of the Cura slicing engine which has several Fix Horrible options in the Expert settings. These do seem to cope amazingly well with intersecting shapes although, be warned, you can also lose important internal holes.
im using c4d.
i can model the object and join then properly but it takes a lot of extra work to join them without bad geometry.
thats why i wanted to know if you can print without joining the mesh.
the hard part is going to be joining the axle and wheels to the body of the trailer
I use Blender to generate STL files. Boolean operations are not that safe. In fact, I am always modeling the object from a single mesh
This is why i use openscad. Unless I make a math error, I’m sure that the models are manifold.