Broken models detected Form 3/3+ PreForm 3.29.1

[wolfmannm]

I’ve been seeing this error on more and more parts lately, even on parts I have previously printed successfully in previous versions of PreForm. I cant allow Fusion 360 to make repairs on many of these parts since they contain proprietary information or are for government contracts. (There are concerns about privacy/ownership etc. with Fusion 360 that come from higher up). I’ve found that most of the time if I ignore the error, the parts print just fine. My concern is that if there is an error, I have no way to verify what that error is. I’d like to know what the problem is so I can go back to my design and fix it if needed. For most designs I’m using Solidworks 2021. Some files are from outside sources. I’m not sure if this is a bug or not. Is anyone else experiencing this? Is this fixed in the current version of PreForm? Do I need to revert to an older version?

Any info would be great, thanks.

[br4n_d0n]

Do you even have Fusion 360 installed or is Formlabs shilling for Autodesk now?

[Jesse_K]

Hi @wolfmannm,

Thank you for getting in touch. I don’t believe we have made any recent changes to the “Repair” functionality in PreForm. From my personal experience, ignoring the error and printing regardless tends to work well. The best way to verify whether the models have any mesh-related issues is to use the slider tool on the right side of the model viewer to step through the models layer by layer. You’ll be able to visually inspect the mesh and notice any irregularities. If the model looks uniform throughout, chances are it will print well barring any other issues related to the printer or model setup.

[Victor_J_ST]

Trust yourself, if you can’t accept that Fusion 360 makes repairs to model files, then ignore this warning message

[alexhawker]

(I’m not sure, but I would guess they have permission from Autodesk/F360 to include some script or bit of code which automates the repair process, as opposed to uploading your (possibly large) mesh file to the cloud, processing it there, and then re-downloading. In exchange for this permission/licensing, they have to state they are using Fusion 360).

You could test this theory a number of ways - one might be disabling external internet access on your wifi network while running the repair (and you could look at the task manager to see if your local CPU usage spikes during the repair process).