Export processed/sliced model as STEP or SLDPRT

[LouisXIV 0]

Hello everyone,

 

I am a brand new user to this forums and a fairly inexperienced tinkerer of 3D-printing and the utilization of Cura in general.

Using the search function I was not able to find a topic related to what I am curious about and the SolidWorks addon also seems to be meant for different purposes.

 

The question I have aims at the export of models already processed/sliced by Cura and thus ready to be exported as Gcode to a printer to instead reimport them back into SolidWorks to perform a FEA.

The FEA is meant as a pilot test to study and compare the effects that different kinds of printing settings like infill density and pattern might have regarding the deflection and stress on designs of mine when applied with a force and without the need to actually print and measure every single one of them.

Of course I could try to recreate my designs as hollow bodys and then try to include infill patterns of different densities manually in SolidWorks but if Cura would be able to perform this task for me automatically and exactly the way it slices the formerly solid CAD model into partly hollow Gcode, it would make my work a lot easier.

 

Thanks for stopping by and your ideas

Edited January 8, 2019 by LouisXIV

[Smithy 1,146]

Hi

I think this is a question for Solidworks, because you need the gcode export of Cura, it is the only file with all the informations you need. So what you want to do is, to import a gcode file in Solidworks and check the slicer result with your stress tools. 

 

But I don't know if Solidworks is able to do that, import a gcode and perform any action on it, I guess no.

[nallath 1,125]

We don't have any way to do FEA and as far as I know, solid works doesn't have the know-how to do it even if we were able to provide the internal geometry. You would also have to take the speed of the printing (since this also affects the adhesion between layers) into account, which isn't something that's done right now.

[LnGk 0]

Hello! I am also interested in extracting a 3D model of the toolpath from Cura preview section. I am actually interested in a different application: I want to make a nominal/actual 3D geometry comparison with scanned data. Does anyone know what type of surface rendering Cura is using for Gcode preview and if there is any way (plug-in, code or other software) to export or reconstruct the toolpath as a 3D file (STEP, STL)?

So far, I have found this published work (http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3055186.3055198) that does something similar with CSG shapes union in OpenSCAD, but the full details are not disclosed. It would be great if Cura can perform this directly.

Thank you in advance!

P.S. I though I should use this thread as it is a similar topic, let me know if I should create a new one.

[nallath 1,125]

On 3/6/2020 at 4:31 PM, LnGk said:

Hello! I am also interested in extracting a 3D model of the toolpath from Cura preview section. I am actually interested in a different application: I want to make a nominal/actual 3D geometry comparison with scanned data. Does anyone know what type of surface rendering Cura is using for Gcode preview and if there is any way (plug-in, code or other software) to export or reconstruct the toolpath as a 3D file (STEP, STL)?

So far, I have found this published work (http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3055186.3055198) that does something similar with CSG shapes union in OpenSCAD, but the full details are not disclosed. It would be great if Cura can perform this directly.

Thank you in advance!

P.S. I though I should use this thread as it is a similar topic, let me know if I should create a new one.

It's actually a bunch of shader rendering tricks that we use. So the model that you want doesn't really exist, sorry.

[MohEDU 0]

On 3/10/2020 at 6:44 PM, nallath said:

It's actually a bunch of shader rendering tricks that we use. So the model that you want doesn't really exist, sorry.

Hey 😄

Can you elaborate more please ? I mean on the visualization process.

Is it visualized through an .svg file ? Or which library are you using for that, is it Qt or openGl or other thing ? I tried to go through the source code but my experience in that is a bit low.

 

Thanks.

[nallath 1,125]

It's not visualised through an SVG, it's visualised through a shader (so the instructions are handled by your GPU).

[GregValiant 1,492]

I use a VBA macro to read any gcode file into AutoCad.  My old Acad version requires some tricks to open a text file (I have to go through Excel) but once it's open in the streamreader it can be read and translated line by line.  G2 and G3 required a lot of thought but all the G1 and G0 moves are just drawing lines from point-to-point.

This angle bracket is a normal gcode file.  Travel moves are on their own layer so they can be shut off and ignored.

 

 

This is a file created using ArcWelder.