archigreen wrote:
Following are Programs with direct 3D PRINTING capabilities.
My question is why is Cinema 4D in the list and our beloved ArchiCAD is not?
3D Software
3D-Coat
3D Crafter 9 Pro
3DS Max 2010
Alibre Design
Art of Illusion
AutoCad 2010
Autodesk Inventor
Autodesk Revit Plugin
Blender
BRL-CAD
Catia Native
Carrara 7
Cheetah3D Native
Cinema 4D
......
Zbrush 4
You'd actually be surprised to learn that ArchiCAD is more 3D-printing capable or 3D-printing ready than most of the programs on that list.
If I remember correctly from 3D-printing from my grad school days (and I don't believe 3D printing has changed all that much even with the recent commercialization and mass-marketing of the process), to 3D print, your model has to fulfil one vital requirement for it to be viable enough for the 3D printing programs to translate it into a fabricate-able format, - and that would be that it's geometrically "water-tight".
Essentially what this means is that the model can't have any back-faces exposed and that all solid elements and shapes are completely and actually "solid" - no holes in the model. The back-face is the reverse side of the face you see on a 3D model and although it may be shown as a face, from the respective 3D program's point of view, that particular face doesn't exist or is a null face simply because 2 dimensional objects with zero-depth don't exist - in the real (3-dimensional) world or in the way the programs read geometry, or at least are supposed to.
But just because it doesn't and can't exist in the real world doesn't mean computer programs don't allow us to use them and work with them as if they do and this is where surface modellers like Sketchup come into the picture.
So for programs like Sketchup you have to make sure your model is water-tight and all the surfaces you create are part of an enclosed volume. (there are 3rd party programs you can use to do this like Materialise Magics which help you clean up your model and check for holes prior to printing) - which would essentially mean that they're are not really as 3D-printing ready as they claim since you can't do this from within the program.
With ArchiCAD, we model using geometric elements (as opposed to openn surfaces) - which are enclosed (geometrically) representations of construction elements like walls, slabs, columns, stairs, even shells - with 2 notable exceptions.
The Mesh tool (with the depth and skirt turned off), and the Morph tool.
With the Mesh tool, I imagine when you export your model for 3D printing (assuming the depth was turned off), ArchiCAD assigns a minimum depth to the skin so that it's not a 2 dimensional surface (most programs actually do this in lieu of cleaning up the model with the minimum depth being the minimum that thickness that most 3D printers are able to print.)
With the Morph tool it has a built in function to check your Morph object for holes and inform you if it's water-tight (and essentially 3D printable) and in the absence of this, I imagine upon export the same thing would happen to the Morph element with AC assigning a minimum depth to its "skins" to enable you to print it.
Ideally you want to clean it up yourself and check for the holes on your own as relying on that algorithm can result in weird results (especially if you have manifold surfaces) and a brittle model upon printing.
But the point being that one doesn't need a 3rd Party program (like Magics) to clean up your model after you export it for 3D Printing.
Presumably.
I'm still not 100% certain that the translation for "loose" meshes like for the Mesh or Morph tool work in the way I described it and maybe some GS tech person or more knowledgeable person might weigh in, but based on how I've seen it work in other programs this is what I surmise would happen with ArchiCAD as well.
