3D PRINTING INSTRUCTIONS
3D Printing
The AAA 3D printer deposits material in layers and where the structure can’t support itself, will lay down support material that later dissolves in a bath of solution and water. The process of dissolving can take up to 24 hours (depending on amount of support material) and does not include the actual time it takes to print.
Step 01: Simply
This may actually involve rebuilding a new model instead of trying to modify your current one. Think about what you want to model and how you can simply it in a sort of “parti” 3D model. Think of it as a massing model. It shouldn’t contain any detailed complexity that you probably have in the original model. Essentially it should be a continuous shell
Step 02: Gravity
Relates step one in the sense that you’re going to want to be conscious of how much support material your model can require (i.e a cantilever, or between floors) This will significantly affect the amount of time required to print, but have flexibility with this by understanding that the material is laid in layers bottom to top. Use Gumball in Rhino to explore various rotation positions that can determine an efficient solution to printing your model.
Step 03: Joining
One of the first things you’re going to want to check on your model is if there are any non-manifold surfaces. This is usually the case with most of our models because we work in layers, thus creating some of these conditions especially at intersections of walls, floors, roofs, etc. The image above shows a building mass composed of two separate polysurfaces.
In order to fix this issue, you’ll need to perform a “Boolean Union” on the objects. Type Boolean Union in the command prompt and select the objects desired for the Boolean union. Press enter, and Rhino will proceed to join the two polysurfaces into one unified polysurface. The image above now shows one solid in one layer (Noticeable because the object is now ALL in the black layer). Now that we have a uniform polysurface, we can go ahead and check the object properties to ensure there are no other issues.
OBJECT PROPERTIES
Select the object, and next the “Layers” tab, select the “Properties” tab.
Scroll to the bottom of the menu, and select “Details” A dialog box will appear. Locate the Geometry subtitle and ensure that your object is a valid polysurface and a closed polysurface with “x” number of surfaces (depending on your individual models.) Also note that there should only be manifold edges, and in this example there happens to be 50. Close the box.
