The goal is to obtain a perfectly sealed body, “watertight”. To better represent this idea, you have to imagine that the inside of the object is filled with water, which should not come out, regardless of orientation. Therefore it must be modeled with a view to create a body which can be converted into solid.įor this you need to create a closed body with finite, seamless borders, paying special attention to the characteristic “watertight” mesh.
In the following section, you will learn how to make a printable surface model.Īlthough surfaces are not directly usable for 3D printing, it is possible to use surface modeling by converting all surfaces into volume bodies before exporting. It may be the case, however, that you need to work on your model surface. Boolean operations in surface and volume are identical and have the same characteristics. We recommend as much as possible to work in solid bodies for 3D printing. If your model contains only simple geometric shapes, then it’s highly recommended to use the “design part” workbench. Then clicking the “results” tab will generate a preview of the cut.īefore the merging the bodies, you can observe two distinct bodies that intersect.Īfter using “add”, the two bodies are merged as shown in the screenshots below You also need to activate the “volumetric cut” icon present in the tool edition. The “section” tool brings up a yellow plan scheme you can move manually or using the “positioning” tab. Then you can access the “assembly design” workbench, which contains the “section” tool, located in the toolbar at the bottom of your screen. This requires that the body belongs to a product. You can verify that your model is merged using a section view. For 3D printing, the Boolean operation “add” applied successively to different bodies will get you a single body ready for printing.Įach function applied by CATIA generates a printable valid model in 3D volume terms, of course, you still need to respect the constraints of the material you want to use. They are applicable between all the body parts you have created and are accessible via the ‘Insertion’ tab > ‘Boolean operations’ or simply by right-clicking on the body in question in the tree. These boolean operations can be performed at any time of your modeling, although it is common to perform them gradually. It is sensible to create bodies for each operation, so you can easily tweak them against each other through Boolean operations. Solid modeling is used for simple geometries and uses of such operations as “positive” (extrusion, revolution, rib …) and “negative” (pocket hole, groove …). We’ll look at the solid bodies in the first step before treating surface bodies in a second step, the latter being less suitable for 3D printing. Your 3D model must have a minimum thickness corresponding to the limits of the material used to be correctly interpreted by the 3D printer. In fact, the planar body has no thickness (the thickness is set zero), which can not be translated into anything “physical”. Whether solid or surface modeling, it is important to create as many bodies / sets as you have different materials to be applied to your model.įor 3D printing, it is best to only export files containing volume parts, not surface. Surface modeling mainly uses geometrical sets that contain the geometric elements (points, lines, splines, maps …) necessary to create surfaces. Note that a body can contain any number of functions, but it is nevertheless essential to work on multiple bodies if one wishes to be able to perform Boolean operations between them. Solid modeling involves different bodies, within which the functions are contained. For these there are two different workbenches you can use: Part design exclusively for solid modeling and Generative Shape Design for both surface and solid modeling. CATIA offers two main types of models: Solid and surface.