Meshmixer 2.0: A Better Way to Generate Support

[nick-foley 5]

Arrrghhhhhh! the UI and behavior of Meshmixer is so bad that I almost can't use it. Once you leave the support-creation tool, all of your preferences are reset, and you can't add any more support without letting it try to auto-generate a new batch of support on top of your original support. Great job, team. Also the fact that most of the sliders don't snap to integer values and have wayyy too many decimals sucks. 5.2413 layers? Useful. (I guess these were all things mentioned in the initial writeup of this tool, but they hurt a lot more when you understand what they mean...)

Autodesk might have put a shiny wrapper on this turd... and there might be a sweet nugget of gold inside this turd... but for now anyone who wants to get at that Meshmixer gold is going to have to wade through some sh*t.

(Useful tip, though - under "View" > "Navigation Mode", you can change to "123D" which gives you pan, zoom, and rotate controls all as much more standard mouseclicks instead of mouse+keyboard.)

 

[nick-foley 5]

Also, sidenote, but if I was trying to print that oval structure you're doing, I would probably just fill the entire inner volume with a 1mm wide "membrane" and then cut it away with an xacto after the print finished. Like the caps I put over the bearing holes to keep the thin walls perfectly aligned here:

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:208346

It's fast to generate and probably pretty quick to print, comparatively speaking. Poke a few holes in it if your part is large to speed it up and save material.

 

[ian 32]

a little question... for example the last screen shot from Aaron.. when you need so many supports for a hard object.. is it not better to cleverly split your model.. print the two or three parts on the hot bed and then stick them together?

Ian :-)

 

[aaronalai 2]

This forum is a wealth of information, even the 3d printing subreddit can't hold a candle to this place. Thanks for the link Nick, although your written explanation was good I downloaded the CAD and Stl files for the piece you referenced. Did you print it out in this orientation?

and if so, were you not able to print without the thin membrane walls? From my limited knowledge of actual 3d printing technique, it looks like the printer could have printed overhangs at the gradual circle openings, was it there for bridging purposes? Sorry for all the questions, your photo on Thingiverse looks great for such an awkward shape that also needs to be printed accurately, so I'm interested in the specifics.

*So I was looking at the print orientation again and your photos on Thingiverse, and I think I orientated the larger of the two pieces wrong; either way the questions still apply.

 

[aaronalai 2]

a little question... for example the last screen shot from Aaron.. when you need so many supports for a hard object.. is it not better to cleverly split your model.. print the two or three parts on the hot bed and then stick them together?

Ian :smile:

 

I totally would have printed this in halves. Because this is part of something that may end up spinning, I need it well balanced, there are also threaded holes inside the larger base unit thingy.

 

[nick-foley 5]

Yeah, that orientaiton is correct. The overhangs are all easily printable in the model I referenced, but the walls are thin enough on the bearing mounts that if they are allowed to, they will warp slightly when printing. When the bridging finally happens at the top of the bearing mount, they will be slightly ovalized. With the membrane in place they are structurally rigid at all points prior to the bridging.

 

[Daid 306]

Secondly, an 'inverse combing' move algorithm would be great - allowing you to tell Cura to actively avoid crossing over printed islands when moving from one to another.

 

That's in the pipeline, it's not that difficult, but I need to restructure a bit of code for it.

 

[illuminarti 18]

Yes, the UI leaves a bit to be desired, but I'm told they're working on addressing some of the points I raised. One minor helpful thing is that in the support UI, you can click on the numbers and type them in, rather than sliding - and you can tab between them. The sliders are basically useless.

 

Arrrghhhhhh! the UI and behavior of Meshmixer is so bad that I almost can't use it. Once you leave the support-creation tool, all of your preferences are reset, and you can't add any more support without letting it try to auto-generate a new batch of support on top of your original support. Great job, team. Also the fact that most of the sliders don't snap to integer values and have wayyy too many decimals sucks. 5.2413 layers? Useful. (I guess these were all things mentioned in the initial writeup of this tool, but they hurt a lot more when you understand what they mean...)

Autodesk might have put a shiny wrapper on this turd... and there might be a sweet nugget of gold inside this turd... but for now anyone who wants to get at that Meshmixer gold is going to have to wade through some sh*t.

(Useful tip, though - under "View" > "Navigation Mode", you can change to "123D" which gives you pan, zoom, and rotate controls all as much more standard mouseclicks instead of mouse+keyboard.)

 

[illuminarti 18]

That's in the pipeline, it's not that difficult, but I need to restructure a bit of code for it.

 

Yay, thanks, Daid!!

 

[aaronalai 2]

(Useful tip, though - under "View" > "Navigation Mode", you can change to "123D" which gives you pan, zoom, and rotate controls all as much more standard mouseclicks instead of mouse+keyboard.)

 

Thank you!!

 

[lennart-bruggink 3]

Hey everyone!

I know I may have missaid things about meshmixer, however one very useful tip that changed my mind ( today!) about it,

is that when you do not like the auto generated support, you can add support beams YOURSELF!

(I overlooked it at first, but Some may know, some don't, which is why I am saying this)

My print failed after three hours, so I was going back to the drawing board. I thought i'would add support myself in Rhino, but thenI got tired about that and thought there must be another way. I was randomly clicking when the support was shown to be generated in meshmixer, and then I discovered it!

(sorry for my enthousiasm, but I feel like finding my own Holy Grail (and of course getting past that terrible bunny:movie reference!)

So yes,

No more knocking over support beams!

left click and drag to show a beam, shift click for placing it.

click on a spot to do a vertical beam.

Cheers,

Lennart

Print where I discovered it:

 

[aaronalai 2]

@ LennartBruggink

You might like this video about using MeshMixer:

And of course illuminarti's awesome blog posts:

http://www.extrudable.me/2013/12/28/meshmixer-2-0-best-newcomer-in-a-supporting-role/

http://www.extrudable.me/2014/01/02/the-guy-with-the-dragon-part-2/

 

[lennart-bruggink 3]

And of course illuminarti's awesome blog posts..

 

Yeah, those are the ones ( dragon supports) which made me think that it should be possible to use the support again and that I try it again.

AAAnd off course the video you just showed me had a part in which it said how to add more beams..

I feel stupid yet happy that I discovered it "RTFM"

Cheers!

Lennart

 

[aaronalai 2]

Lol :smile:, no worries I was using it for a week pretty intensely before Nick Foley mentioned the normal mouse orientations, the lack of which was driving me crazy! I doubt we have found all the features thus far.

 

[meshmixer 0]

Very interesting thread. Please don't hesitate to meshmixer forum. As Illuminarti mentioned, I am actively working on this...actually I would say that what you are using now is probably best described as an early beta of the support generator. I can only print so many tests myself, I really do need people to describe their experiments so we can figure out what does and doesn't work.

So, I hope you'll keep digging for those "sweet nuggets of gold"...

 

[lennart-bruggink 3]

Very interesting thread. Please don't hesitate to meshmixer forum. As Illuminarti mentioned, I am actively working on this...actually I would say that what you are using now is probably best described as an early beta of the support generator. I can only print so many tests myself, I really do need people to describe their experiments so we can figure out what does and doesn't work.

So, I hope you'll keep digging for those "sweet nuggets of gold"...

 

Hmmm nuggets.. gonna print me some chickin' nuggets (ah that lovely futuristic sound)..

It would be nice to have some sort of direct watermarked overlay of all the functionalities, directly when you edit ( for people like me who want to rush into it .

I think from the forums here we can make some kind of preset for selection which is best for the Ultimaker ( 2 ), ask the guru's (them moderators) if they are willing to help.

I have noticed that the print I have done this night was too poor in thickness of support beams. ( ~0.5 mm is not good! I got a bit too optimistic on that one. Next time i'll keep to 1.6=>3.2 when scaled up double). There were a lot of beams that were ticking and some were flipped over. The print is almost finished though:

 

Cheers!

Lennart

 

[IRobertI 520]

I don't know why but I always giggle a little when I see pictures of prints that fail like that, I find them hilarious

Also, a big welcome to meshmixer, great to hear that you are actively trying to make your software better. I've only tried it once so far (haven't needed it for anything specific yet) but I love the idea behind it.

 

[aaronalai 2]

I agree, I understand it's a lot of time and energy wasted so the person printing it probably doesn't find it very amusing, but many of the failed prints look funny :smile: Yeah I'm glad to see they are taking such interest in improving their software. I have a list of bugs? to share with them in their forum or email and in this thread later today when I get some free time. I am more than happy to help!

 

[owen 19]

I also love the idea behind it, but, I haven't been able to work out how to reorientate my model to the build platform yet. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

[aaronalai 2]

I also love the idea behind it, but, I haven't been able to work out how to reorientate my model to the build platform yet. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

 

Edit>Transform then you can grab the little colored bits in the center to rotate and translate

I like the align feature also under edit, where you mate either the LastPlane or AABox? along an axis for a flatter alignment. The image of the grid on which the object floats is a bit misleading, I thought the object had to be in contact with it for the supports to be properly generated, but they don't so don't get discouraged if your model is floating a couple inches above the white matrix.

 

[IRobertI 520]

@owen: Edit button -> Transform. Then drag on the coloured quarter circles near the center. When you start dragging a "grid" (English failing me at the moment but I think you know what I mean) will appear in a circle around the object and if you hover over that while dragging it will snap to 5degree increments.

Hopefully that made some sense...

edit. Bah, Aaron was too fast

 

[gr5 2,170]

@owen: Edit button -> Transform. Then drag on the coloured quarter circles near the center. When you start dragging a "grid" (English failing me at the moment but I think you know what I mean) will appear in a circle around the object and if you hover over that while dragging it will snap to 5degree increments.

 

This was all explained in Illuminarti's original blog post. If you read the whole thing (it's not very long) you would have known. I had to keep his post up in one window, and follow the transform directions in another window to get it right.

 

[owen 19]

@Aaron: Thanks, that's what I was looking for

@Robert: Thanks, I needed to snap to the 5 degree increments

@gr5: Thanks George. I thought I had read through Illuminarti's blog post looking particularly for this. Maybe I didn't. I've managed to achieve what I wanted to do now thanks to Aaron and Robert but I'll look through all of Illuminarti's blog post again to pick up some finer points

 

[peggyb 170]

 

here is a tutorial about the align tool.

 

[peggyb 170]

or this one