Just a small technical question: Is there somebody who knows a script (or another way) to make some sort of heat map to check wall thickness? I have figured out a clumsy way to do this in Editable Poly, by using "soft selection" on the outer wall and set the distance to the minimum wall thickness of the print material. That way you create a heat map on the inner wall where it's too thin.
Have you tried the "Shell modifier"? I use this all the time when i build models using planes. Edit: ah sorry, misread. Not sure if there is a way to create a heatmap the easy way.
A Shell modifier is indeed usefull for giving the mesh a correct wall thickness. But with complex a form and a dence mesh. The modifier will push the vertexies in the corners thru each other. Making the mesh a bit messy sometimes.
Sometimes using the "Straighten Corners" helps with those issues. However, if the object is very organic with a lot of surface curvature as well as straight corners, this option could make things worse. So, another option besides what you are asking for is to manually create a shell by copying the object with Shift + Scale to the center of the original, then select the smaller copy, invert the normals, select the border edges of both objects and bridge. Sometimes you need to help the bridge algorithm by creating an initial bridge connection between two edges first, then bridge the rest in border mode.
In my complex topologies I have come to rely on volumetric retopolization and shelling courtesy of the magic code of ZBrush. In this way I'm free to have coincident faces, poly mesh 'solids' and other aberrations that would never pass model checks. So I do the dynamesh thing, merge in my 'hole at the bottom' and run the magic shelling retopo alog. With the new interior surface on it's own polygroup I will often modify and smooth the results for optimal thickness and tolerance control. If you are stuck with the techniques discussed above also look at the relax and push modifiers. Booleans, hand bridging etc. -S
Thanks for the tips & tricks, some of the ways of making a shell I already knew. Zbrush is really powerful and got some tricks up its sleeve I have yet to experimented with. I know it can make good shells for hi-poly models. So that's next on my list to work on. But, I was more looking for a way to generate a heat map for finding weak points. Like in Shapeways, without having to upload your model constantly