MakerGear Forum

Hey ed....you dropped this hint in passing on another post:

Which is why Slic3r has modifier meshes ......you can apply specific slicing parameters to specific parts of the model.

Must confess to being intrigued.......How would one go about applying one of these if one needed to? (I've dl'd the software, read through the User Manual, checked the Wiki, and fiddled with the settings a bit.)

Can't find it. (Strikes me as being potentially highly useful though....would like to.)

Where's it hidden?

Update: Whoop! Never mind....found the tutorial and another manual over on the blog.

Whooooooaaaaaa! Hold the phone!

Jules wrote:Can't find it.

If anybody else is looking for the doc:
http://slic3r.org/blog/modifier-meshes

The Slic3r manual:
http://manual.slic3r.org/

Applying a modifier mesh requires keeping two different solid models in sync, but it's probably not much harder than modeling one object for a dual-color printer...

Man, I'm so excited i'm having to keep myself from babbling.
(I opted not to post the one last night where i was screaming about how wonderful it was - you guys already know that! )

You can use any shaped mesh (so far i've done tubes and blocks and cylinders just to test...all worked), and i wasn't sure if you could use Rhino to export just a selected object, but you can, so it integrates very simply into Rhino design. You can do surface patterns that vary in certain spots for cool surface textures. (Picturing a chess board with different surface patterns for the squares)

Anyway, totally cool!

Just look at this chit...........

Jules wrote:Hilbert Curve text burned into a block

I'm an absolute sucker for Hilbert Curve fill: no strands, no lines, no gaps, just a fine granular texture that looks and feels nothing like the hand-knitted surfaces on all other 3D printed doodads.

Slap it over 15% 3D Honeycomb infill at 2:1 and my usual brackets come out just about perfect...

I've been very impressed so far - it's handled some very complex slices that I've tossed at it.......slowly.....but it hasn't crashed.

Had to set it aside for a bit to do some closet cleaning today though - great way to spend a rainy day. (Not.)

the only gripe I have with Slic3r's mesh modifier is that you can't orient or modify the mesh in Slic3r it's self. you have to do all of that beforehand in your 3d modeler.

I have fiddled with modifiers while modeling with tinkercad, so it was clumsy at best. are other programs a bit more robust with mesh modifiers?

Matt_Sharkey wrote:you can't orient or modify the mesh in Slic3r

That's probably an advantage, because the modifier must have a precise orientation with the part it's modifying and should come from the same overall design, rather than getting shoved around on the fly.

Being that type of guy, I'd just twiddle my OpenSCAD code a bit to move the modifier mesh around. You could actually import two STL files into OpenSCAD, set up the transformations, move them around programmatically, then export the tweaked files into separate STLs again, but ...

A GUI CAD program with part relations would be a better hammer for the job: make the modifier position depend on the object position. IIRC, jsc knows which CAD programs can do that and has some direct experience.

ednisley wrote:A GUI CAD program with part relations would be a better hammer for the job: make the modifier position depend on the object position. IIRC, jsc knows which CAD programs can do that and has some direct experience.

I know what, now? Not 100% sure what you're referring to, but I think it's about parametric assembly. All history-based parametric modelers that do part assembly support that, I believe. That includes, in my direct experience, SolidWorks, Fusion 360, and OnShape. They have the concept of "mates", where you basically say "this flat part abuts that flat part" or "this cylinder revolves within this hole," etc. Then you can move parts around and do motion studies, etc. Very useful for large mechanical aggregations; I used them to virtually assemble my eggbot model (http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:844167) to make sure everything fit together properly. I know nophead has done similar things with OpenSCAD in his Mendel90 model, but that is some wizard level work and not something I would be tempted to attempt.