Missing Spokes on Wheel in VRML file?

OK, I'm sorta at a loss.
When my wheel AND spokes is exported as a vrml file, the spokes are missing!

But when just the spokes are exported , they show up just fine.

Can anyone advise what I'm doing wrong? Driving me nuts.

jpeg of the vrml file (Wheel and spokes)
https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7110/8167145743_dc70f9aaac_m.j pg

But Shapeways renders it as this: (missing spokes)
https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7112/8167153701_4aa19e4997_m.j pg

Using Blender 2.49

Can you share with us the files?

Did you use ctrl j on both the spoke and wheel meshes, were they separate objects, or did you boolean union them together?. All three can make differences in 2.49's exporter. Sounds like to me they are separate objects. Big question is it exporting as a .wrl or a vmrl2 ?

Make sure every thing is manifold,normals oriented correctly. You are going to have to make sure its just 1 object(use boolean union or some fancy mesh surgery)

Thanks for your advice.
Been trying every combination of Mesh joining that I can think of.
Exporting as object, scene, etc.
Nothing seems to work.
Maybe the answer is obvious but I don't see it.
Problem could be with my wet-ware
Attached is the *.wrl file.
Using Blender 2.49 exporting wheel as wheel.wrl (VRML97)

Continued to try various mesh-joining methods,
ctl-j, boolean, etc.
Finally got it to work,
Thanks for all your helpful advice!

The model had a few problems to be able to print.
First you had 4 seperate shells(objects), plus each mesh had a few doubles that need to be removed, then loose verts that need to be removed. The spokes need to be redone, look at the pic.
1. Select an object,go to edit mode(vertex select, select all vertices, remove doubles.
2.Deselect all,(a), then select loose vertices from the select menu.
Repeat the previous steps for each of the 4 objects(Rim, wheel,spokes, hub)
3. With that mess finally done, select the outer rim and wheel using shift select, join them.
4. The spokes have several problems. The normals when you jointed were pointing everywhere, wrong and right directions. You could not recalculate normals. So create a manifold spoke, whose face normals all point outward. Spin it like you previously did. Look at pic again for proper placement. The original spin created a mess at the hubs center. Make them a little thinner.
5. Now just boolean union the spokes to the hub creating 1 object, then boolean union this object to the wheel/rim object.


Good deal you got it to work. I am too slow again. Oh well maybe it will help another.
Keith the slow poke, lol

Fredd...
you do not have to join, bolean anything... leave them as separate meshes and all will be ok... shapeways will bolean them together themselves... this looks like you are in blender... when you use the array modifier don't do anything. then have the outside wheel... the other thing is that when you export out to stl in blender it will only export out the parts that are selected... so select everything. [a] and make sure when you export use the apply modifier tick...

chris

Yes I know.. But the spokes were 1 joined mesh object, when I ran a boolean union test on the original, the intersecting faces/verts edges in the mess at the center caused an incomplete boolean union, even with doubles removes, normals facing in the correct direction, and manifold spokes.
This could be a problem with failed uploads, intersecting faces.
This is a mesh you need to download Chris. Fixing it would be a tutorial in itself. Plum is a new blenderhead though. He learned from it, which counts.

Yes, looking at the image, I can imagine you had overlapping vertices in the very center. Our Mesh Medic software flags that as a non-manifold point in your model and tries to fix it, but it unable to handle that particular problem. Moving the centers away from each other allows it to properly create a boolean union of your parts.

Cheers,

Bart