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1-Visitor
June 22, 2018
Question

Turning sssembly into one solid component

  • June 22, 2018
  • 2 replies
  • 7434 views

Hello, 

I have an assortment of assemblies that I've built up and need to 3D print them as solids. I need to figure out efficiently turn all of these solids into one big happy one. See attached.

I've tried 'shrinkwrap' and merging all the surfaces to solidify, but it has been very inconsistent and too much of trial and error to get the merging to work properly.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for the help!

Best,

DC

2 replies

19-Tanzanite
June 23, 2018

For 3D printing, I'm used to dealing with .STL files.  One way I use to convert assemblies to a single parts is to export your assembly to STEP file, then turn on the (hidden) config.pro option intf3d_in_as_part yes, then bring the exported STEP file as a single solid, and then finaly export that as the .STL file.

DCllc1-VisitorAuthor
1-Visitor
June 23, 2018

Thank you, @pausob. Good idea.

 

Having trouble figuring out how to show hidden options. For fun, I went ahead and added it myself to see what would happen and it looked like it had worked. It gave auto gave me the option to import as a part. and then only half of my part came in -_- Is that probably due to the complexity of the assembly?

 

 

19-Tanzanite
June 24, 2018

You can't shown the hidden options, though it sounds like you did the right thing to activate it (from your description of how "part" was pre-selected when importing a step assembly), 

 

But then the manner in which your import failed is not something I'd expect.  Typically, my problem with "high-complexity" assembly models being brought in as parts is that Creo won't "solidify" the part - it will look "right", but it will be a hollow surface model.

 

Can you share the image, or better yet, post an example of the failed model ?  (I can only open Creo 2.0 models)

21-Topaz II
June 26, 2018

You can save the assy directly as an STL for 3D printing.  If the geometry overlaps, it should print as one solid.