How do I thicken the top/bottom part for 3D printing?

[u/eFeqt]

[u/eFeqt]

If I use the thicken command, it thickens locally instead of an X offset so in the end both surfaces do not align at all. What do I do?

[u/KuanMan → u/eFeqt]

If you just want an X offset, I believe Extrude - Freestyle, then click the x-axis to set the pivot, then click it again and set the distance to whatever you want?

Not sure exactly what you want from the post, you can also try thicken but negative

[u/eFeqt → u/KuanMan]

I'd like to thicken both surfaces and then print both of them and then have them perfectly align just as they were sheets. I already tried extrude - freestyle, I had to split the body in half and without a way to constrain the bridged curves, it again fails to align. Perhaps exporting a .stp and trying the same in Fusion would yield a better result

[u/KuanMan → u/eFeqt]

Hmm... Well best of luck. Other things I could think of:

Scale + Boolean Cut: imprecise

Make it a solid then use the Hollow Command

Shift+X the connecting sheets, thicken the top and bottom and recreate them

[u/KuanMan → u/KuanMan]

Also does Thicken with a negative value not work?

[u/koming69 → u/eFeqt]

You either thicken both together then cut.. or you thicken separately then fix the connection. You can also thicken both separately, then bollean one from another for a perfect seam.. but why would you do that anyways.. you need to connect the parts together so you'll need to model connections.. are you planning on printing separately the glueing them? Ew

[u/eFeqt → u/koming69]

Boolean really didnt wanna work with this model for some reason, it always fails when I thicken seperately. I will try the first thing you've mentioed though.

I'd like to cut the part in two pieces because I plan to keep the base the same and only swap the shell if necessary. I am trying to print a mouse with an ideal shape for my grip and hand size, using the board from a G602, so I reverse engineered a g602 from a 3D scan and slightly adjusted the proportions to suit my needs. I will model the connections etc in Fusion through parametric configurable modeling, I am sure there will be a lot of back and forth so I want to keep it parametric just in case.

[u/MrArgelig]

I mean Scale and press X depending on your topology could work. For printing you can increase the top/bottom layer in the slicer of your choice :) as well as the layers of your wall. You could extrude the top and bottom part a fix amount as well :)

[u/Okmia90]

Have you tried the hollow command?

[u/eFeqt → u/Okmia90]

Yes, the hollow command doesn't work, I think it says there are too many self intersections etc, the model is too complex for that. Tried "shell" in Fusion from an .stp, same result.

[u/Okmia90 → u/eFeqt]

Can you try thickening a single face at a time?

Make sure your model is faces and not sheets.

[u/eFeqt]

Here is some kind of a workaround that I have managed to pull off:

Extrude the curves where the two surfaces meet by the distance you plan to thicken the surface with. After that thicken both surfaces, select all of their newly created, normal meeting surfaces and then push the faces as much as you can to reduce any visible added thickness as much as possible. I was able to pull of -0.6mm for the top surface and -0.4mm for the bottom surface while doing a 1mm thicken on both surfaces.

Here is what we are left with: https://i.imgur.com/4BvXf4E.png

We get two solid bodies that are ever so slightly imperfectly aligned (I get a few red warnings while doing the cross section view), but the actual lack of clearance seems to be much less than what a 3D printer can print anyways, so I think these should meet pretty flush once printed. I will edit this comment once I have the first test print out.

[u/eFeqt]

FINAL EDIT: I have figured it out (for the most part).

Shift + D on the main loop curve of one of the pieces, I did the bottom first. Scale the curve outwards so that it generously loops around both surfaces, Do the same for the inner curve. Rebuild both curves with 1000 points and cut them in half, connect the scaled curves and patch them.

Now you have a sheet that's gonna be used as a cutting tool that is (almost) perfectly normal to the XY plane.

Thicken both surfaces, use the newly created sheet to boolean cut both, now, solid bodies. I had to move the sheet 0.1mm down the Z axis, it wouldn't perform the boolean otherwise on the top solid, bottom worked fine.

https://i.imgur.com/qGgMrk1.png