Artcam or other software?

Hi

I'm new to 3D printing and want to create a mould for chocolate.
Does anyone has experience with software packages and its prints on Shapeways?

I'm experienced in photoshop but new to 3D modeling and printing.

Thank you

Emiel

Here's a short list of software known to be compatible with SW.

Thanks Michael!
The list is overwhelming.!
Do you have any suggestions?
I'm looking for free/low price app, easy but with volume measurement
Its just for mold making.
I saw Artcam on YT but is doesn't seem to be compatible with Shapeways
Is silicon the preferred material or can i use harder plastic?

Thanks
Emiel

The only Shapeways material that is food safe is ceramic. If you search in the forum (using the search on th eforum pages, not the general SW search) you will find some relevant threads.

A lot depends on your intended design.

Check out 123D Design, Sketchup, Sculptris, Blender. All free software. But also each is very different. 123D is made by Autodesk. They have a few different pieces of software that are easy to use and learn to do different things. Sketchup is similar, does have a community of developers that program enhancements. Sculptris is like playing with a ball of clay. And Blender can do pretty much anything but is not as easy to learn and dive right into.

I tried Sketchup but found out that the substract tools are only on the PRO version.
So I have my model but not the to-be-printed mold.

Is there any software available who does it, is compatible with Shapeways and has volume/stability measurements?

Artcam seems to be designed for CNC printing but apparently not compatible with Shapeways.

Thanks for letting me know

Emiel

Basically, all 3D CAD software is compatible with Shapeways since almost all can export in one of these file formats DAE, OBJ, STL, X3D, X3DB, X3DV, and WRL. Artcam is good; are you referring to Artcam Express? Check to see if it will export in one of the formats I mentioned. There's a very high probability that it does.

Are you working on an invention or something like that? If not, can you post your Sketchup model to the forum as an attachment? You might get better help by doing that if you don't care who sees or uses your model for personal use. Otherwise, did you know you don't need to buy the pro version to do boolean operations with Sketchup? That's cuz there are plugins for Sketchup that will let you do that. Here's a good place to go for Sketchup plugins. The wide array of plugins for Sketchup is what makes Sketchup so useful.

Go here to learn all about making molds. The answer to your mold material question is not answerable without knowing the application and the topological details of your design.

Thanks UniverseBecoming for the useful information.

I'm trying to create a mold of the front of the attached statue (got it as a part of the Grammys stage in Sketchup's library).
But despite the guidance I didn't succeed.
Can anyone help me or link (youtube) tutorials who explain which steps to take?

The final goal is to have it 3D printed on Shapeways

Emiel

Sure I can help you with this, no problem!

So, let's talk about what you'd like to ultimately do here. You want to create a mold, that part I know. It tells me that you want to produce multiple pieces of this. So here are some questions.

How big will this be?
What kind of material will the end result be made of?
Do you want to use Shapeways to make the actual end result mold?
Or do you want to make a mold for a mold to be cast in silicone or something like that?
Do you want to include the full ear or just half the ear?

Be sure to look into the legalities of using this data too. Though you may have found it in the Trimble Warehouse, there may be legal issues regarding it's use.

Are you wanting to learn how to make the mold in Sketchup, or are you just wanting to get it done in any way possible?

Looks like Disney fiercely defends their intellectual property rights regarding their Oscar sculpture.

https://www.google.com/search?source=ig&rlz=&q=acade my+oscars+lawsuit&oq=academy+oscars+lawsuit&gs_l=igo ogle.3...7512.16445.0.17743.10.10.0.0.0.0.210.970.6j3j1.10.0 ...0.0...1ac.1.Z5q8EshSK0Q

They won't even let people have personal academy awards parties with props of the statue as decorations! HAHAHA! :laughing:

YOU CAN'T EVEN SELL IT AFTER IT'S BEEN AWARDED TO YOU!! GEESH! HAHAHA! :laughing:

Hi James!

Thank you so much for your prompt and useful info

How big will this be?
A: small, just to test accuracy (1,5 cm height)
What kind of material will the end result be made of?
A: food safe silicone
Do you want to use Shapeways to make the actual end result mold?
Or do you want to make a mold for a mold to be cast in silicone or something like that?
A: I want SW to make a prototype as a test (doesn't have to be food safe) and take it from there
Do you want to include the full ear or just half the ear?
A: half the ear is good enough
Be sure to look into the legalities of using this data too. Though you may have found it in the Trimble Warehouse, there may be legal issues regarding it's use.
A: Yes, I'm aware of it, I just wanted a known complex figure to test, it's for private use. I don't know weather Shapeways will accept this form or not.
Are you wanting to learn how to make the mold in Sketchup, or are you just wanting to get it done in any way possible?
A: Its both, I really want to have something tangible and want to learn in an efficient way how to make it (not necessarily in Sketchup, but thats the only 3D program i'm familiar with)

Looking forward hearing from you,

Emiel

The file has hidden geometry (parts of the stage) that you will need to delete before trying any booleans on it in Sketchup. If you clean it up your booleans should go as planed. Just grab the center of the feet and move the whole statue to just above x0 y0 z0. Then select all and explode it a few times. Then draw a rectangle on the xy axis to see some of the erroneous hidden geometry. delete the hidden geometry. Draw another and delete any more junk that appears. Once you get that far draw a rectangle at the mid way point of its feet and then push pull it up covering the entire front of the statue. Then just boolean subtract it to make the mold. You can select all and use the intersect faces with model command and manually delete the polygons you don't want or you can install and use one of the boolean operations plugins available. Any junk that appears just keep deleting until there is no more junk.

Then scale it to the size you want and export as a DAE and import into Meshlab. Once in Meshlab export as an STL then upload to the Netfabb Cloud Service to make it watertight.

Let me know how that comes out or if you need any more help.

Hi James

Thanks so much for the explanation.
The first part went well

But since I'm novice to 3D I do not really know what you consider as "junk" within the model nor the tricks to visualise it.

While testing I found out I have problems installing Meshlab:
I downloaded MeshLab_v132_64bit.exe. When it is unpacked it says: "Your system does not appear to have Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 SP1 redistributable package (x64) installed"
But when I try to download it says I already have a newer version of C++.
So i'm blocked.

Could you help me out?

Emiel

Hi Emiel,

I looked at your file and I see that the boolean you tried didn't work. But that's ok, there are other ways. The problem is that this Oscar file is just too messed up to do anything with it in Sketchup. Forget about Meshlab for now and install Netfabb Studio Basic. You'll want to get Meshlab installed at some point if you plan on doing 3D stuff, but it can be avoided for now.

Then get an exporter plugin for Sketchup. This STL importer exporter works, but make sure you have the latest version of Sketchup.

Delete five faces of the rectangular box you made being sure to delete the face that has the errant booleans, then push pull the remaining face back to the same size so that you end up with a new rectangular box. Then move this box to the back half of the figure. So now you should have the front part of the figure protruding from the rectangular box so that now the it looks like Hans Solo frozen in carbonite.

Take this then and export it as a STL. Then import it into Netfabb. Once you have it in there scale it to the size you want and do an automatic repair on it. Then export it as a STL. The export is under the part functions.

Next upload it to the Netfabb Cloud Service. When you get it back a few minutes later, import it into Sketchup and take a look at it. Are there any parts missing or does it look ok. If there are parts missing you need to do more repairs in Netfabb, if it looks ok then proceed.

If it looks good delete four of the faces of the rectangular box leaving the face that is opposite of the figure. Then move the remaining face so it is positioned just beyond the the hands. Now get the line tool and connect the corners together. As you do this notice that new faces appear. Once you have connected the four corners with lines and all of the faces fill in you're done. Now all that is needed is to export as an DAE and then upload it to Shapeways.

Let me know if you have any problems.

Hello there

I just realized Artcam is not compatible with Shapeways. That is why i cannot upload anything tha comes from Artcam???

I made a relief in Artcam i imported the stl in rhino and then in Zbrush for sculpting.
But i cannot upload it on Shapeways. I've made some tests, and none .stl file that comes from Artcam cannot be uploaded aparently.
Very strange...

Please apply if someone had the same problem

Thank you

Download netfabb studio basic from netfabb.com and see what it makes of your stl from Artcam, and/or upload a simple testcase here. The problem is probably not Artcam as such, perhaps some missed step in the design process, too many triangles in the resulting mesh or too large stl file. (Limits are 1 million triangles and maximum 64 megabytes, zipping of larger files is allowed)