Implicit body support in PreForm

Feature Requests & Ideas
1

Hi,

As a researcher working with very complex shapes on a Form4 (well, complex shapes are what 3D printing is for in the end), I would love to have the possibility to import implicit body cad in PreForm instead of having the possibility of importing only .stl, .3mf and standard cad files. Some high -end products already start offering this feature.

2

Hi @cnritae,

Thank you so much for your valuable feedback! We really appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts with us. The idea of supporting implicit bodies is definitely something I’ll take into consideration and discuss with the team.

We’re always striving to improve and increase the options available to our users. With PreForm 3.43.0 (released on December 10, 2024), we’ve already taken a step forward by expanding our capabilities with CAD file import (still Beta), allowing you to directly import native CAD files without the need for conversion.

Your suggestion is being noted, and we’ll keep it in mind for future updates.

Thanks again for your input!

Best regards,

Shiden

3

@Shiden, I believe @cnritae is asking for the ability to import multi-body files and be able to manipulate the bodies individually, even as a multi-body STL file. Most other slicers including GrabCAD, Slic3r and Cura allow this. When the file is imported, it comes in as a single file, but there are tools in the slicer that allow for “splitting” the bodies apart.

I would second that feature request.

4

Dear @Shiden , actually I was not suggesting multi-body import. The main issue with very complex models (for my case, very complex heat exchangers) is that you need very detailed mesh to get all the fine parts to be printed correctly (avoiding fluid leakages) and doing so with STL or CAD files requires very large files (up to 4 GB), which are not correctly processed by the slicers. In contrast, the ability to work with implicit bodies, that are just a mathematical representation of curves and volumes, allows to have very small files that can be processed. Of course, this requires the ability for the software to convert the implicit body in layers. See here to understand better what I mean: What is Implicit Modeling?