Automatically Repair STL Files in 2 Minutes with netfabb. If you don't have netfabb download it from here. There are versions for Linux, Mac and Windows.
For this example, we're using the just released Windows v 4. Porsche STL from here. The process we'll follow is roughly as follows.
Monday, August 16, 2010 by netfabb. netfabb GmbH proudly presents netfabb Cloud Services, an advanced and easy to use online application of netfabb's STL repair. Use the Microsoft 3D Model Repair service powered by netfabb to repair STL, OBJ, 3MF or VRML files automatically.
- A list of viewers for stl files, commercial, open source and free. Programs to repair stl files.
- Stl file viewer File browser with preview Slice export Scale, mirror, translate, rotate Save triangles as part Simple automatic part repair Measurements of parts.
- Materialise Magics, a user-friendly data preparation software package and STL editor, can guide you through every step of additive manufacturing process or 3D.
- In this post we show how to automatically repair STL files for 3D printing using a great free tool, netfabb Studio Basic.
Load your file and check netfabb's preliminary analysis. Perform a Standard Analysis. Perform Repairs. Apply repairs to your file. Export the repaired file as a new STL 1) Load your STL file and check netfabb's preliminary analysis. Load your file by choosing 'Open' under the 'Project" menu in netfabb.
When opening an STL file, netfabb performs a preliminary analysis to determine if there are issues that could cause problems during 3. D printing. The most common issues include holes, 'naked' edges, and triangles with invalid orientations (i. If problem(s) are found, a large, red "!" will be displayed in the lower right hand corner and (usually) a part volume will not be calculated. In the case of our porsche file netfabb has found problems and alerted us: If you do not see the red attention warning, congratulations, your file is very likely ready for 3. D printing and nothing further is needed.
Below you can find a list of software tools that perform such tasks and are freely. (either under payment or for free). In the context of mesh repair. How to Fix and Repair Your 3D Files Using. Shapeways recommends a few programs that you can use to check and. This is a free program that can edit STL. STL file repair. Repair broken STL files with holes, bad edges, unconnected faces or which are non-manifold. How to check and fix an STL file ready for sending to a 3D printer This is a common problem when sending files to a rapid prototyping bureau, errors can occur in the.
Perform a Standard Analysis. Now that we know that netfabb has found problem(s) we'll perform a more thorough analysis. Find the menu icon in the upper right which looks like a circle with a magnified section. Under this select the option for 'Standard Analysis'.
Settings> Colors> Repairs). Nothing has changed with your original file. The information panel on the right will now include a summary of the type and number of problems. Pay attention to the number of problems but especially take a look a little further down to see if the surface is closed and/or some of the mesh seems to be pointing inside- out. In our case, a red 'No' tells us that our surface is not closed. D printers don't like unclosed (non- manifold, non- watertight) surfaces and will often not print or will print additional artifacts when they are encountered. They are usually caused by small holes or edges that don't meet and may not even be visible in an on- screen rendering.
A green 'Yes' indicates that our file is 'orientable' and therefore seems to be free of another common defect: inside- out triangles. Now that we have loaded and analyzed the part we are ready to attempt to automatically repair the file. Perform Repairs. To repair our file, find the red cross menu item in the upper right next to the analysis button and press it: You'll notice that yet another 'layer' is created underneath the 'Part Analysis'.
The triangular mesh is now shown on the model and new options and information are available in the lower pane. Press 'Update' to see a count of each type of error.
Next, select 'Automatic Repair' and then choose 'Default'. STL file printable.
You can see what these steps are by clicking on the Repair Scripts tab in the lower right of the information pane.) This may take a little while especially if your part has a large number of triangles. For example, on a dual core 2.
GHz computer this 7. MB, 1. 51k triangle file took just over 6 seconds to be run all of the default repair scripts. A not- so- obvious status bar in the lower right hand corner will show progress. When the process is complete you can again press the 'update' button under the status tab. You should see zero border edges, invalid orientations and holes. If your part is a single object (vs.
While not optimum multiple shells will not usually cause printing problems. You should also visually verify that your model still looks the same as your original. In some cases, netfabb automatic repairs may create solids where in fact a hole was intended. This is rare but you should still check visually. At this point you could continue with manual repairs if needed/desired but we'll stop here since it looks like the default automatic repairs by netfabb have been sufficient. In a subsequent post we'll look at some common manual repairs in netfabb.
Apply Repairs to your file. We're not quite done as we still need to apply the repairs to the originally loaded file by pressing 'Apply Repairs' in the lower right hand corner. This removes the analysis and repair layers and fixes the original rendering. You should see the original green rendering - but without the red attention warning. You should also see a volume calculation.(If you still see an attention warning and/or lack of volume calculation it means that netfabb was unable to completely repair your file.
The file may still be printable or it may require further manual repairs beyond the scope of this post.)5) Export the repaired file as a new STLAt this point it is important to understand that you have made no changes to your original file. If you choose "Save" you will create a new netfabb 'Project'. Since we started this process to create a clean STL file we now need to create a new (repaired) file.
Under the Part menu select "Export as" STL. This will bring up a new window. First, check that the file name and location are what you would like. However, the location will be not necessarily be in the same folder but rather the last folder saved into. When you press 'Save' a new dialog will appear with another analysis of the file to be created and possible errors. It seems that this may occur because the netfabb file format contains more information than, for example, the STL format; some of the repairs it has made might therefore not be carried over.
Again though, automatic repairs can be made. Press the 'Repair' button if you see a large red 'x'. If successful, instead of a large red 'x' you will see a green check mark. In this case, 9 seconds and a single iteration were sufficient to repair the 4. In other cases it might take multiple iterations and you may still have a non- zero number of errors. The most recent release of netfabb Studio Basic seems to have improved this functionality.
Just keep trying until you either have a green check mark or a minimum non- changing number of errors. Once your file is 'repaired' you can press 'Export'. Congratulations, you now have a printable STL file.
Want to learn more? See our post on using netfabb to manually repair STL files. D Additive Fabrication, Inc. Add. Fab) is a start up company located in Colorado, USA. Add. Fab provides high quality 3.
D printing that is easy to price and order, at a lower cost than existing fabricators.
How to check and fix an STL file ready for sending to a 3. D printer. Common issues are. Reversed normal’s.
Holes in the mesh. Noise shells. All of these will prevent your model from being 3. D printed. These errors can normally be fixed using software freely available on the internet, one such program is Netfabb which is an STL file viewer and repair tool. This software is free to download (Scroll to the bottom of the page, you don’t need to fill in all of the information!) and use and will identify basic errors and repair them if possible. It is available for Windows, Linux and Mac. Once you have installed Netfabb open up the software and it will look like the image below. The important areas on the interface are highlighted above.
You can rotate the model by pressing and holding the right mouse button and then dragging; clicking on one of the standard views will reset the viewpoint. To zoom you can use the scroll wheel on your mouse or you can use the icons shown above. The basic information area of the interface shows the overall dimensions of the part (the bounding box), the volume, the surface area and the number of triangles in your model, this information is useful when you are selecting which 3. D printing technology to use. The analyse, repair and measuring area of the interface are the functions that we will be using to fix the STL file.
Selecting the analyse button will generate additional information about your part including where and what the errors are if any. The repair function will analyse and repair the errors that it finds. There are a lot of free STL viewers out there but there are very few that will repair your file as well. The measuring icon will do just that and will allow you to take measurements around your model by selecting different triangles; this is useful for checking wall thickness's and minimum detail sizes. The screen shot below shows a part that has been loaded into the software. You can see from the bottom right icon that there are errors in the file as soon as it has been loaded.
Fixing your STL file. Select the part so that it turns green and the bounding box is shown, now click on the Repair icon and this will open up another interface screen in the bottom right of the screen.
Click on the auto- update tick box to ensure the data is up- to- date while you are working on it. Click on the automatic repair button, this will open a popup box which will appear in the middle of the screen.
From this box you can choose either the default repair or simple repair option. The default option will run all of the repairs that Netfabb has so I would recommend that you use this one. Click on the execute button and Netfabb will carry out the repairs. Your statistics area should now update to show that there are no more errors in the 3. D model. Border edges, invalid orientation and Holes should all be Zero and shells should preferably be equal to one although it won’t if there are multiple parts in the STL file. All that is left to do is click on ‘Apply Repair’ and then confirm that you would like to remove the old part. To save your part you need to click on ‘Part> Export Part> as STL (binary)’ and that’s your STL file fixed.