N Gauge (1/148) Axbridge Railway station building

Well, I'm a n gauge railway modeller quite interested in possibilities of 3d printing for my scale.

This is my first attempt of printing a building:

It is a station for one of my layouts in development, of British atmosphere.

The original is in Axbridge, UK, in the former S&DJR 'Strawberry Line', now gone. But despite the line was closed decades ago, the building remains in good condition (and as I can see it on google maps, it is an excellent reference for not having to commute there from Spain, where I live: D).

Although there are a pair of errors in the STL, I'm quite sattisfied with results I've achieved. Walls and roof are printed in WSF, and windows, doors and canopy are printed in frosted detail.

So, this is the model (sorry, but my digital camera is too old):

Nice very nice.Considering the scale and materail(WSF) its worked well.The roughness actually would be avery good likeness for stone the more i think about it.Be good to see when painted.
Well done.

Stu

look, great. What 3D software did you use to make it?

The model has been made in Autocad. I've been using it many years for architecture infographics... but the truth is that it has given me many problems with this my first model to be printed, when generating the final STL.

So with the model finished, I guess because of the complexity of the model, export to STL became an impossible process.

Autocad generated STL apparently correct, but after analyzing it with netfabb, it wasn't right to be printed, because boolean union of mesh failed, and several stones of the facade appeared as detached objects (around the doors holes, where there are curved areas), and as they are too small (0.2 mm thick), they didn't commit the requirements of minimun 'wall thickness', so model was rejected.

So after several tries, the STL was always with the same problem, and I finally had to start rebuilding the model almost from beginning, generating STL step by step, to check each time with netfabb, until I achieved to join all parts into one.

And yet, when I thought everything was correct and I've got the model in my hands for first time, for my despair, as you can see in one of the windows in the photo, the STL has been generated with an error and there are extrange holes around the frame of one of the windows that should not be there.

I also made ​​a mistake too by making the roof tiles so small that are practically indistinguishable, especially on the roofs of the wings of the building, where the detail is almost virtually indistinguishable.

But despite these shortcomings, this is the first model that I printed... and I'm pretty satisfied.

Respect to WSF finish , it's rugged texture is good enough to look like stone, (I'll have to try a brick facade, but I have my doubts that the detail is noticeable ... may I have to oversize the bricks a little) but I've given 3 coats of primer gray with airbrush (to keep the details) and I have not managed to cover the surface well enough.


So I still have work to do to advance with painting process, and put then some pictures of the result.

Looks pretty good. As said here before, the grainy effect of WSF is actually a benefit here.

What's the width and depth between the bricks?