Hi, I have used blender in the past but it was some time ago. I have recently got a 3D printer and was trying to design an enclosure for a small project. I managed to make the box and all the sizes correctly. I might have to tidy up the vertices where the two parallel extruded walls but removing them causes faces to disappear. I heard that 3d printing software would look at encloses solid faces as solid, so that should be ok. But it all looks good in solid view apart from the pair of holes in each end of the box are not visible as holes in solid view. I have spent a long time looking online youtube etc but cant seem to find a solution so thoguht I would sign up here. But it seems new users cant upload files! eg my .blend. Or a picture of it? So happy to supply those but not sure if I need to get a few replies before I’m allowed?
I should also say I made the holes using edge>bridge edge loops, but it may be the faces around them are not being deleted despite the holes being there, so not sure how to put a hole in the faces as deleting the face removes the hole…
Also there is a square 8mm hole in the base inside the walled area I have the same issue with.
Hi, thanks for your reply and making the video. I haven’t tried copying all the keypresses as I found it a but confusing why you need those angled edges down to the existing vertices of the holes? Is it that me outer and inner faces say at the front are covering the holes? I was thinking I must need the front face to have to have rectangular holes in it and the inner front too? but yes sorry I didnt get what you were doing. I did try bridge faces and that made the hole appear shaded at certain angles but was still closed / solid.
Quite annoying as I managed to make all the walls I needed and the cut out for the switch on the top was ok.
Is it because they are floating in the centre of the face and need to be linked to the edge with edges for some reason to be able to remove the material in the centre for some reason?
It seems lots of things in blender are a bit counter intuitive lol. I probably should do lots of tutorials of more of the basics.
To update, I found another way to do it that I could work out. Subdividing the edges to add more vertices and then move those to make multiple faces to cover the front leaving a hole in the areas I didn’t cover. That works fine and now shows the holes in the walls. I’m sure its not the best way to do it but it did work. Where I didn’t have an edge I needed, I added a face, then deleted only the face leaving the vertices and edges so I could then make the inner wall by sub dividing the new edges. Hopefully that made sense. I will get more complicated as I come across harder issues and spend more time using it.
Hi yes I added the missing face, and it looks fine in solid view, but now my issue is that I have 176 non manifold edges, so I tried some joining etc and spent a long time looking at how to fix this but havent worked it out yet.
I thought it would treat closed faces as solid but maybe not. I did originally make only edges and extrude all internal faces / planes out by 2mm but then probably deleted and messed with vertices faces etc to get my holes right.
But not sure how to make these parallel meshes with holes solid / manifold. Or maybe delete the inner edges and extrude in, but Im sure that still leaves you with a mesh the same as I already have.
I think I have a long way to go on the learning curve.
ESP32CAM Box.blend (860.3 KB)
Hi, yes this is my blender file. I had read about having faces the wrong way round but thats anyone one of many things to work out. And all the loose faces? But you can only have rectangular single faces? otherwise they need splitting with certices and edges? then you have a non manifold mesh again?
I did extrude the original zero width faces out 2mm outwards one at a time thinking they would be solid but it is basically two walls of mesh with no width / hollow inside?
I head talk of deleting all interior walls and solidify in? but wouldn’t that end up with what I have already…
I will have a look at the topic you linked too…
Thanks
Update: when I tried sleeting all exterior faces and Shift + N to sort the normals out (which I am not sure what they are other than relating to which way a face is pointing?) I get when I did when I did that earlier and it breaks it on bambu studio when I go to slice. It looks much better to start with though.
Model looks ok apart from strange thing in front top left a dark triangle:
Hi Picto, that is actually what you and dupoxy had said before re having the corners like that. I guess it doesn’t link having floating hole that aren’t connected to anything? So you have made all the corners at a 45 degree angle which has halved the number of vertices.
Thanks very much I think I will have to read the manual re why the corners have to be set like that. Also the hole in the base is happy, but only has 45 degree angles on one side?
But thanks so much I will test printing that and will make any square corners like that in future. And then make the lid and see if it fits.
So I will post back in an hour or so and see what happens to 17 Metres / 52G of PLA plastic… and if my measurements are correct.
Oh I think the penny might be dropping a little now. So now with the angles like that, there is a continuous surface on the outside and inside? I had seen how to find the non manifold geometry and that lit up the area that was missing on the slicer (3 out of 4 walls!) but I didn’t know what to do to them to make it happy. So with the angles like that I guess its better, but I’m not sure why the corners would still not be connected where the edges are. I presume floating holes are not a good thing. But its printing away now I will see how it comes out…
Also probably a basic question but how did you merge the multiple faces on the front / back? I kept trying join etc but it didn’t remove the edges. And if I deleted any edges or vertices it was making walls disappear.
Hi, the print finished and was almost perfect. I had to file about 1mm off the switch slot to get that in and the camera module (ESP32CAM) fitted well, one side touched the left but a 2mm gap on the right, so I just need to move the right wall of that in 1.5mm? and 1mm wider on the switch gap and its all ok. Also need to make the lid too. It will be a simple slide down going into the holes…
I didn’t manage to clean up your model for some reason so I’ve just redone it from scratch using the original for snapping.
I mainly used cubes that I merged using boolean.
Do the test. Create a wall with a squashed cube and subtract (using boolean) another cube to make a hole like on your model. You’ll see that Blender will create the necessary edges itself (not always at 45° or attached to an existing point btw).
Ah I see that makes sense I can build it by shaping cubes as walls then merge them - that would actually be quicker too. Thanks for your help on that. I will try that out for my next one…
Just for future reference, a tool like TinkerCad: https://www.tinkercad.com/ might be a better choice for this kind of thing. Blender’s great, but CAD modelling isn’t it’s strongest point.
Fusion 360 is the best choice, though tinkercad is supposed to be very simple.
Hi thanks yes I had heard of tinkercad but also that is was fairly basic. As I had used blender a bit in the past I thought I would give it a go, but might have a look at fusion360 too. Not sure if that would be starting the learning all over again but certainly worth a look… Thanks
