nanoDLP

Shahin

Administrator

Registered: 2016-02-17

Posts: 3,546

3D Models Manager & Plate Generator

I am not sure if such program could be useful for anybody else, it would be interesting to know if it has potential for commercialization.

We do lots of printing, I try to measure time spend on different aspect of printing and come up with ideas to speed up the process.
One thing we spent lots of time on is to prepare plates based on ordered items.

I have developed a program which monitor disk and render (ray trace) any new STL on disk. Also it has ability to display them on web and make them search-able.
User could select models and specify how many pieces from each models they need. Program arrange them in plate based on platform size/attributes and export stl.

Whole process to choose models and export plate down from an hour to less than a minute or two. Even with simple packing algorithm it is working much better than manual arrangement. It is possible to add more advanced packing too.

adam

Member

Registered: 2016-02-18

Posts: 100

Re: 3D Models Manager & Plate Generator

this sounds really nice if you have lots of models and you need to print old models in the future.
I don't know if you agree but one of my main issues is finding models i printed before, the arrangement on the plate are not that big of a problem
I imagine a tool which has a database with previews where i could find by name or just browse through the gallery and then simply copy the files to another directory. opening up big stl files usually takes a long time so having a preview database would be ideal.

For me, definitely the most time spent is on generating good supports. I have not found a single program that gives good results for manual support placement.
Magics is shit, as it is super slow and much too expensive.
Creation Workshop has not enough parameters
B9 is the one I use so far but it's also very limited and can make you go mad at times...

I'm slowly creating rhino and grasshopper scripts but it's nevertheless very complicated..i guess support generation is where the money is xD

Shahin

Administrator

Registered: 2016-02-17

Posts: 3,546

Re: 3D Models Manager & Plate Generator

Actually it already has model manager and gallery view but those features very simple to implement and could largely depends on users workflow.
First you browse the models or filter them after clicking on them they will be added to screen above which you could specify number of models.

Support generation is very task oriented, for casting you need very different kind of support than for dentistry. We are working on support generation but I do not expect it covers every case scenarios.

As we could print couple of hounded from a same model in different times, arranging plates are very time consuming.

oliveenchine

Member

Registered: 2016-03-11

Posts: 26

Re: 3D Models Manager & Plate Generator

Hi Shahin ,

I would love to try your 3D Models Manager & Plate Generator , if it is available for testing.

Shahin

Administrator

Registered: 2016-02-17

Posts: 3,546

Re: 3D Models Manager & Plate Generator

Sure I can prepare it. But you will need some SQL knowledge to set it up. As it has many rough edges as we use it only internally.

oliveenchine

Member

Registered: 2016-03-11

Posts: 26

Re: 3D Models Manager & Plate Generator

Thanks a lot  ! should no be a problem !

jamesarm97

Member

Registered: 2017-02-02

Posts: 69

Re: 3D Models Manager & Plate Generator

I would love to test it also. Have sql knowledge.