Hi all. I am trying to prepare this file to be printed:
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www.thingiverse.com]
It is too large for my print bed, so I am cutting it into 4 pieces. Normally I would use netfabb to cut it and call it a day, however, this part will need to hold up 2-4 lbs of weight and be swung around / bumped / handled roughly without falling apart. For this reason I want to add interlocking tabs / a puzzle cut to the part for added stability. I found this OpenSCAD library that does just that:
[
www.thingiverse.com]
My problem is that no matter what I do I cannot get PuzzleCut to work with my model. It renders with F5 and I can plan my cuts etc. but when I use F6 it errors. I have cleaned the model with Netfabb and Meshlab and still cannot get OpenSCAD to play nice with the model. I have spent hours researching and trying various ways of cleaning it and I give up.
My backup option is to manually edit the model to add tabs and if im editing it anyway, some wire traces and a place to put a battery. My problem here is that the only 3D modeling program I know how to use is Sketchup (The MS Paint of 3D modeling). Sketchup simply cannot handle a model with organic elements like this one since it has so many triangles etc.
I have found other programs that can handle it, but only seem to have tools for modeling organic shapes (Meshmixer) or are code based like OpenSCAD and I just don't understand those. I also have Blender, but it took me hours just to figure out basic functions like select,resize, and export.
TLDR
I have a model I need cleaned enough so it can be run through OpenSCAD and PuzzleCut OR I need a program that I can model mechanical elements into an organic model without being Blender hard to learn. Please help.
