Stl's that dont slice

[Titus 170]

Dear all,

So I encountered a model that Cura didn't like. In fact, Cura started freezing and crashing :(

It loads, but the slicer freezes. I can look at the model(and it looks strange, with all the irregularities along the boarders, rather than a smooth wall). But as soon as I enter layer view, it shows 1 at the slider and nothing on the screen...

It's this model: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:309993

I tried to open it in meshmixer, and there it was full of blue and red lines. I tried to make it solid, but that obviously closed wrong spots. Also I tried some other options without the desired effects. I feel silly for not being able to solve this myself, but do you guys have any tips for functions I might have missed, or (free) software that can help me out? Not only making it sliceable, but if possible also with smoother walls for better print quality.

Thanks!

 

[peggyb 171]

use Netfabb and do a default repair.

After that it looks good in Cura.

The walls are still edgy.

In a cad program you could draw the whole thing yourself and extrude it.

 

[donmilne 2]

I had a look with an STL viewer I wrote myself. All the polygon surface normals in this STL are set to zero (this is supposed to indicate the outside direction). I guess that causes problems in some software.

Also, the object has a detail / corrugated texture on many surfaces. I don't know if this was intended or not. The texture has a vertical grain which might make it awkward (and noisy!) to print.

I only looked at the outward appearance: I didn't check to see whether the shape was legal, i.e. a single closed surface, no intersecting solids.

 

[Titus 170]

@PeggyB, I tried to open it in the free basic netfabb software and I tried to do an default repair and export it, but that didn;t load either. Could you point out what I'm doing wrong, or what the correct steps should be?

I think "redrawing this" could be the best solution yeah

 

[peggyb 171]

it took a while to do the calculating in Cura, but it finished, so maybe its a computer thing?

But it looks crappy with all the jagged edges, cannot imagine it would make a nice print like this...

 

[Titus 170]

I really can't get it to slice, or fix it.

I'm trying to get the outline and extrude it myself in a CAD program, as a last resort

 

[Titus 170]

Yeah, I remoddeled it in Solidworks