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Merging polygons within an object,
Hi.
I have this object, which I have merged from multiple spline objects and now “looks solid”. What I’d like to do is simply merge the polygons within this object down into one polygon. THis is for multiple scenarios but for this example, imagine that it is a 3d right-angled triangle containing 5 polygons.
How can I convert this into one polygon (so I can export as an stl and use it for 3d printing). Is there another piece of software or can it be done in cinema 4d?
I’m looking for ANY solution. I’ve tried some but I’m happy to retry any of them properly, if there is a chance for it to work.
Thank you so much,
Ak.Edit.
I know that I can’t use the bridge tool as that adds polygons. I want to reduce the number of them. -
10 Replies
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Can you post the file, or a screenshot of your object(s)?
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That’s going to be a bit tricky, with the way you’ve built it. You can stack Booleans, but there has to be sufficient overlap so that you can union them together. Best way is to simply model it as a single object.
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I can overlap them up until they touch the very outer edge. But would that work and what would be the next stage afterward?
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The idea is that a one or two Boolean objects can be components of another Boolean, and that in turn can be a component of another Boolean, and so on, until you eventually wind up with a single object that can be made editable, connected, optimized, and saved out as a water tight STL file.
Here’s a simplified example: 6379_stackedboole.c4d.zip
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What is the correct way of making it water tight? Since all previous times I’ve tried this, it hasn’t worked out and when importing into solidoodle (a 3d printing application), it just shows up as wireframe.
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You’ve tried it the way I suggested — ending up with a single Boolean object that you can make editable?
Why don’t you try exporting the collapsed object in the scene I posted? First you’ll have to go into polygon mode, select all polygons, and run the align normals command. Then it should export as a water tight STL.
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I think I’ve done what you’ve suggested. In the end, I have 1 object, with a bunch of polygon tags and polygons. It’s one object though. When I tried to export that, I ended up with a wireframe in Solidoodle. I haven’t however, tried using the align normals command. What is that and how do I use it?
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There’s a few more steps that you probably need to take:
1. Make the top Boolean editable;
2. Select all of the resulting objects and run the “connect and delete” command;
3. With that object selected, run the Mesh>Commands>Optimize command to weld points; and
4. With the mesh still selected, run the Mesh>Normals>Align Normals command.
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Just tried it and I’m not even sure what it’s doing. I can’t even select all the polygons due to the complexity of the shape. I selected (what looks like) all the outer polygons I can click but all the inside ones seem inaccessible.
I’m at a sort of loss. I really have no clue. And I had a think about what you said. I’m not having a boole within a boole object. I could never get that working, even after looking at yours. I technically have a cube within a cube within a cube. But their in 3 sections that have been overlayed onto one another. Am I going about this all wrong? I hope not but I don’t know.
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