I upload my models to Shapeways for printing. I know I can just jam two objects together and that works fine, but after the last upload I realized that some of the pieces are not water-tight, but the “hole” is inside the other model. Does this matter?
@Mark_Rehorst It’s LightWave 3D. One of the oldest 3D apps around and still running strong with LightWave 2015! Thanks for letting me know. I’ll close up the holes anyway, just in case.
It matters. Learn to make your models manifold, watertight, and with proper vertices, etc.
Lightwave’s primary design intention isn’t for making 3D printable models so you do need to take extra care when designing your models, as noted above. Facets can’t intersect other facets, they should only touch on their edges. ‘Watertight’ means you can’t have any gaps in the mesh that would let you see the inside of a face from the outside.
@Jeff_DeMaagd I’ve been using LightWave for 3D printing for years with no special effort. It’s been fantastic.
I suggest that you do a boolean and then triangulate. Check for geometry errors then that should do the trick
@jeremie_laflamme I never bothered tripling it before but I guess it certainly can’t hurt!
Triangulation you mean Jeff demaagd
@Mark_Rehorst But I’m already happy with LightWave and it works perfectly. LightWave isn’t even remotely like Sketchup outside of the fact that they both make 3D models.
Meshmixer is a handy tool for fixing issues like that.
@American_3D_Printing I can just boolean, no biggy.