Make Any 3D Model Manifold in Blender: 3D Print Toolbox Guide — Transcript

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1. 0:00How do you check if a 3D model is
2. 0:02manifold or watertight? In order to 3D
3. 0:05print something successfully, it's a
4. 0:07good idea to have a model that doesn't
5. 0:09have any holes and is fully watertight
6. 0:12and doesn't have any extra pieces on the
7. 0:14inside. There are many ways to do this,
8. 0:16but an easy way is to use Blender.
9. 0:19Inside Blender, you can install the 3D
10. 0:21Print Toolbox add-on. There's a link in
11. 0:23the description on how to install the 3D
12. 0:25print toolbox add-on. And that way you
13. 0:27can make your 3D mesh manifold for 3D
14. 0:30printing inside Blender. Once you have
15. 0:32the add-on installed, press N, then
16. 0:35click on 3D print. You can check all and
17. 0:38it'll give you a report.
18. 0:41After it's done checking, it'll give you
19. 0:42a report on how many non-manifold edges,
20. 0:45bad contiguous edges, intersect faces,
21. 0:48zero faces, zero edges, non-flat faces,
22. 0:51thin faces, sharp edges, and overhang
23. 0:54faces. The most important one for 3D
24. 0:56printing is the non-manifold edges. If
25. 0:59you twirl out cleanup, simply click make
26. 1:02manifold.
27. 1:04This will go through the process of
28. 1:06making the model manifold for 3D
29. 1:08printing. It modified 132 vertices, 402
30. 1:12edges, and 261 faces. Then if I click
31. 1:16check all again,
32. 1:18then we can see that now there are only
33. 1:20four non-manifold edges. If you want to
34. 1:22track down those last four non-manifold
35. 1:25edges, you can click your model, then
36. 1:28tab into edit mode, then select this.
37. 1:31This will highlight the edges, and then
38. 1:33you can go around into the model to find
39. 1:35them. It can sometimes be hard to see.
40. 1:38So, you can go view frame selected. And
41. 1:42then it's going to frame where those
42. 1:44non-manifold edges are. And they're in
43. 1:47here somewhere. And sometimes what you
44. 1:49can do is just press X to delete those
45. 1:53edges. And then we can check all again.
46. 1:56Now, it has five non-manifold edges.
47. 1:58That's because we probably created a
48. 2:00hole. So, if I click make manifold, it
49. 2:03added one face. That's exactly what we
50. 2:05wanted to do. So now if I click check
51. 2:08all again, most likely it will have zero
52. 2:11non-manifold edges.
53. 2:14Now we have zero non-manifold edges. In
54. 2:16this particular case, deleting the edges
55. 2:18was the easiest thing to do. Sometimes
56. 2:20you might see a triangle hanging off the
57. 2:22edge and then you can just delete the
58. 2:24face. That's always different depending
59. 2:26on your particular model. Now that I
60. 2:28have a clean manifold mesh, I can go
61. 2:31ahead and export it as an STL. Just go
62. 2:34to file export STL.