Hey there community! I am trying to convert a model I found from the 3d warehouse but its got way to many shapes and I can’t figure out how to close off the shape to make it a solid. The only thing I need is to get the outer surface “shape”. My model is a car and I want to just get the surface of the car. So imagine if i took a blanket and covered the model, froze the blanket, removed the model, and turned the frozen blanket into a solid - is that possible? is there a tool for that?
Hello. Editing someone else’s model for 3D printing can take a very long time. 3D Warehouse has a “Show Printable Models” feature. Maybe you could try that one?
Post a link to the 3DW model, please.
The car model might just be too complex to use…
But, you could try my Drop Vertices plugin.
Trim down the car model - e.g. remove the wheels - you can add those back later.
Also look at cutting it in half -vertically - longways - it’s symmetrical, so after fixing a half you can join a mirrored part back together.
Also cut it in half - horizontally - along the center of the doors, then flip that over.
If the car an indentations in it, then you might also want to drape over its side or front etc
Draw a ‘grid’ of a rectangle face. a little bigger that the car’s ‘footprint’.
Use Move+ctrl to copy-array a series of small squares - perhaps 1" / 25mm ?
These will form the ‘vertices’ to be dropped…
Copy this face over the top of the part of the car you want to ‘wrap’, and use the Drop Vertices tool to drape it like a blanket over that car part.
You can then tidy up the unwanted parts of the ‘blanket’ etc.
Repeat one the other parts and then reassemble the ‘blankets’ into a solid form.
This is not going to be very easy !
That is basically the gist of this video. Taking a model from the warehouse and the steps that need to be taken to get into a printable state:
thank you! this is exactly what i was looking for