Multi-part Character Assembly Tips?

Hi,

I’m digging into modeling ‘best practices’ for printing complete characters, and I was wondering if anyone had tips to share specifically relating multi-part assemblies.

  • Either based on size (character is too big for the build volume),

  • Or structural integrity (character appendages and attachments can be
    printed more easily if oriented individually on the build platform.)

I’d love to hear what folks are doing and pass that on to character modelers who want to build characters that can print nicely on the Form1.

Thanks!

Jeff

PS Adding context to my first bullet above: If I am printing a large character in 2 parts, joined at the waist (for example), do I need to generate two separate STL files that are separated by the height of one slice layer? Or is there a ‘magic’ way the slicer can stop/restart the print at a specified slice layer? (man would that be cool). Any guidance around these types of issues would be greatly appreciated.

PreForm does not do that kind of stuff. You can of course scale it down. You will need to make two files and two prints if you need larger. I would recommend some pegs and holes to strengthen the waist though.

Yeah, that’s not something that we do in PreForm. I’d suggest taking a look a Mold3D which has a variety of 3D-printing specific resources. This thread also has some great examples which might be useful to take a look at.