Machine3 I want to complement you on MESHmachine!
I have used it for a while now, and the Plug feature has been awesome. I used it for all the fastener details on this 2BB-2 Droid I am modeling for the BB-8 Builders Club.
This is a full scale, 3D printable model (made to be fully motorized and animated), so I needed to be able to add those fastener details into the mesh and have them fully integrated and printable, not just visible in a render. It was fast and it worked great!
I also created plugs of the numbers 0 - 9, so I could number the individual panels of the sphere on the inside, for assembly. (This is something I recommend someone publish - a good pack of number and letter plugs…) I need to learn more to make those number plugs better, to deal with triangles near the outside of the mesh that can cause distortion when the plug is created. I need to watch the videos again and figure out exactly why I had a problem, but I overcame it with an outset at the rectangular perimeter of each number, so there were only quads there on the outside.
I also used the great Tape feature to lay out all the panel cuts, then converted those to a mesh, and then manually created the final width, inset, and integrated them. (It would be so awesome to be able to specify the width of the tape in units, not just pixels, and then have that “Plug” into the mesh for making panels).
Thanks for making your tool!
