I've begun coverting some of my old models so they can printed in 3D. It has proven alot more complicated that I imgained, its whole diffrent set rules and objectives form makeing models just for images. Most of my models are made up of a large number of separate but overlaping objects, some of them simple, some very convoulted shapes. Stitching all these parts togther into one mesh has proven difficult and time consuming. I use Maya and unfortunatly Mayas booleon function is pretty crap, the only way that works thus far has been cutting out internal geometry and stitching objects together one at a time. I'm after any advise to speed the process along.
you can work around boolean by making the seperate objects hollow + solid and connecting them together with small "windows" I´ve used this few times and it has saved many crashes caused when booleaning together multiple complex or simple shapes. and it keeps the mesh clean. here´s an obj file for clarification.
I'm not sure I get you, are you saying that the object doesn't have to be a single unbroken mesh , it can be made up of a number of separate meshes so long as they themselves are unbroken? Do you mean that your example is printable as is? If thats true then it would indeed makes things vastly easier.
If you've got multiple meshes overlapping, then Shapeways' software will automatically merge them, so you don't have to worry about that. As long as each individual mesh is watertight, and you don't have any parts below minimum wall-thickness, you should be fine. Andy