3D printing sizes from Blender files
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 13 ก.ค. 2022
- Not the most showy topic/video but one that is really important to understand if you want to 3D print from Blender without getting annoyed.
Hope you find it helpful! - แนวปฏิบัติและการใช้ชีวิต
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One of the first things I changed in my defaults was units to mm, scale to 0.001 and grid to 0.001 - had no issues with blender, various slicers and other design software.
That's cool. I do talk about the scale changes at the end so people can do the same as well. The video is more about understanding the issue.
Agreed, I followed a tutorial (I think one by Maker Tales, he has a few now.) on how to set the view and scaling to mm for precision modelling and never had any issues with clipping or weird rounding during booleans and certainly never had to mess with scale during or after exporting.
Oh, I have one tip for people setting up their default view:
I added 2 wireframe boxes in a separate collection. Each one is the build volume of my printer; one for my Mars, one for my Neptune. I then set them to hidden and save my default view file. It means I can very quickly check that models will fit in the build area and give a IRL scale reference. It does make it doubly important to tick the "Selection only" when exporting though or you just get a big block. Adding another mesh for scale comparison for a 28mm mini might be handy too, there have been times when I've spent a long time adding detail for it to be too small to even print, let alone be noticeable once printed.
@@ArtisansofVaul I'll also just take a moment to thank you all these videos though :) I started trying to pickup blender a couple of weeks back and so many tutorials have them using tools without saying how they activated it, using addons without saying what the addon is, using menus that appear different due to addons etc...
Your videos are not only the exact subject I want to use Blender for, but you also never use a tool without naming it and saying how to activate it, never use an addon without saying what it is and where to get it etc..
I actually feel pretty confident in Blender now and it's entirely due to the videos you made.
So... many thanks :)
@@SkonkBot Thanks so much dude. That's really nice of you to say.
@@MartinJamesLittle I'm hoping to do a little something that you might find interesting about this suggestion. I had the idea watching a video on something else and thought it might be applicable for 3D printing design. I just need to check if it works.
This is very helpful to know. I have worked in Blender for years and never knew why this happened. Thanks to this video I can understand how to not have the itty bitty problem when importing to slicers. Awesome and thanks :)
My pleasure Tessa, great to have been able to help 😁
Blender units was a mystery to me, now everything is clear thanks to you
No worries at all. It took some trial and error to work out for sure including some test printing to be certain. But I thought it was useful knowledge to pass on.
Very helpful video. I’ve been puzzling over this units issue for a while now. This explained it neat and sweet. Thanks!
Glad people see finding this helpful and saving them time 👍🏻
I was trying to figure out scale relative to units in blender and this is exactly what I was looking for. Thank you!
My pleasure 😁 It does seem a bit odd when it starts relating them to other programs.
I've never had any problem working in mm. It's floating point numbers, so scaling by 1000 doesn't affect the precision even though blender tends to truncate the lower digits on display. I've also not had to worry about the scale, because STL files don't have units anyway, so every program I use assumes they're mm. Maybe your one slicer is confused and you think that's why importing things is a problem. And of course if you're doing something like a cloth simulation to create a minifig's clothing, you need it in the right scale for the simulation too (where "right scale" would be making the minifig several meters tall). I probably haven't done as much as you, but I never noticed blender crashing or anything like that, and I just set my far clip-plane to maybe 100 meters instead of many kilometers away when I'm working in millimeters.
I'm loving binging this channel. So much good info here.
I'm glad to hear you don't have any issues with it and Blender has apparently done things recently to help with it. So the issue with the scale definetly happens in 3D builder and its such a helpful tool to give a mesh a final check I pretty much always throw everything into it first. It can be overcome in a variety of ways but this just tends to be easiest/more reliable. But if you don't experience it as an issue then no need to change anything😉👍🏻
@@ArtisansofVaul I will keep that in mind. I find that PrusaSlicer can send the model to autodesk to fix it without having to have yet another set to it, so I haven't needed it. But it's good to know it's there. Maybe it is newer versions of blender after all, too.
Oh, I also tend to save my STLs as ASCII. I wonder if that makes a difference.
@darrennew8211 That's interesting. Never tried saving them in a different format so that's a nice idea.
You fixed several of my problems in one video. Thank you!
My pleasure man. Glad I could help 😁
Thank you so much. This was something I have been trying to get answers to and you gave the best answer.
My pleasure chuck. I was something I had found quite annoying so having tested quite a bit I thought it would be good to share 😁👍🏻
this worked like a charm, thank you so much! I made the mistake of turning the original file I was workin on into mm and was very puzzled when it looked microscopic in size on lychee
My pleasure. Glad to be able to help with what can be a quite annoying problem.
Very helpful overview, thank you
No problem 😁
Don’t know how it took me so long to get to this video. Thanks vaul this is incredibly helpful
👍🏻 Cheers man. Happy it's helping out with some good info 😁
@@ArtisansofVaul haha i tried using mm a few times but always had issues. Using M for mm is a great fix. Thanks again!
Awesome video like always! Are you by any chance planning to follow this up with a video explaining your process to 3d print objects, choosing the settings you use (especially for supports) for the slicing?
I'd be happy to. I thought there were a lot of tutorials on that but I'd be happy to ifnits what people want.
Thank you so much. This was very helpful
No problem Jay. Glad it helped 😁
Really interesting video, thanks for making it. Most of my work is exported as an stl for a CNC machine, which-like 3D printers-deals with mm as the base unit. I've never had a problem with working in mm in Blender, but have had to remember to scale models up and down as appropriate when switching to and from 3DCoat or for final export. Setting Blender's units to 'none' might be a nice simple way to simplify that part of my workflow. 👍👍
I'd be really interested to hear how that turns out for you. I don't have experience with CNC machines/software so it would be good to know if anyone else asks.
@@ArtisansofVaul No worries, I'll let you know how it goes. Am working on a few on-going projects at the moment, but I'll give it a test on the next new one.
@@ArtisansofVaul Just an update... I've now switched over to using 'none' as the scene units for all my projects which will be machined on a CNC machine. It has greatly simplified import and export of objects, as well as jumping between Blender and 3DCoat. Great tip. I'm glad I watched your video.
@@DerekGoveDesign Thanks so much for coming back and letting us know how that went. Really glad its gone so well and is helping 😁
Very useful info dude!
Cheers and glad its useful!
Thank you so much , this helped me alot
😁 Glad to be able to help out 👌🏼
Wonderful, thank You
No problem. Cheers for taking the time to watch and comment.
Great video! How could I take a 3D model and print it on papel so that the scale on paper matches those on blender? I mean, I want to creat an object and then creat a blueprint of it.
Hmm.... That's tough, I'm not sure if there might be a way of doing that in the render settings to control the size of the image created. Personally I'd bodge it and bring the image into a program where I can draw something that's exactly (for example) 10mm and then match the image to that. You can do that even in Microsoft Word. But it isn't exactly perfectly precise.
nice information. this is helpful for using Blender.
Thanks.
I'd argue that scale and size is always important. Even when you're doing things like still image renders; the way lenses and rendering optics work in the raytracer especially are dependent on the scale and measurements. If you're modeling a miniature/model, then the proper scale is the actual scale you want it printed, of course. But if a spaceship is actually 2km long, make it 2km long if you intend to use it as a render model. You'll just get better results in so many places. Scale it later if you decide to print your 2km spaceship (but you'll probably need to re-model it anyway to fix detail scales).
That being said, the Blender thinking meters and everything else thinking mm is annoying. Blender has a built in Unit Scale feature which I've toyed with, but I don't think I tested importing into Lychee. I'll see how that works on a model I'm working on.
Edit: Okay, right off the bat, switching units to 'none' and Unit Scale to 1000, it is displaying my 10cm cylinder as 0.100, so that's promising.
Thanks for coming back. Great points and I don't know enough about rendering to have commented so thanks so much for the insight. Cool to hear about your scale experiments and thanks for coming back with the results 😁👌
@@ArtisansofVaul Thanks! After some testing, the Blender unit scale feature just divides the units it shows you internally, so while you create a cube and it comes out by default as 2mm, and shows as 2mm, it's exported and treated with all the camera clipping issues just like if you set units to meters and typed in 0.002. Importing into Lychee still makes it 1000 times too small.
I found you could export by a factor of 1000 in the STL export option to fix the import issues in slicers, but that doesn't solve the other issues with blender operating at such small units.
thanks for the video. I have some issues. When I import stl file into slicer software is seems like it is lowpoly object it doesnt matter how much subdivison I apply. I check wit 3d print addon seems everythin is ok. I dont know why
Hmm.... I may need to see the file but when you export the STL have you got the "Apply Modifiers" box ticked?
when i was working in mm scale to design something I was getting this issue where blender would merge vertices, especially in circles and when scaling and beveling.
Yeah. This can be avoided by playing around with lots of settings bit hopefully this helps explain the issue.
This video explains why I'm experiencing a number of strange issues. Especially when it comes to the 3d Printing tool and errors. If I make anything very small, the tool spits out Zero Faces ans Non Manifold. But, the moment the object is scaled up, the errors evaporate. May test later to see if switching scale helps with this issue.
Glad I could help 😁 To be honest I always ignore the zero faces as it just means they are really small almost all of the time.
@@ArtisansofVaul oh really, that's great to know. Thanks for the heads up! 😃
Haha loved the disclaimer at the start. 👍
🤣
Thank you, I was getting suspicious about the dimensional errors occuring whilst working on small parts in mm, looks as though no units is the best option for me.
My pleasure. I mean you can do it any way you want if you're willing to do the mental maths but I find this easier.
I gave that up long ago. So when modeling for print i just model it as it is then scale 10x in slicer
Yeah I did that too. I'm definitely going to be sticking to the Blender Units method for a while to see how it works out.
Thanks for that video. Very important issue, wish you'd made that last year. 🤣
Haha. Trust me, I wish someone else had made it 2-3 years ago. It would have saved me a lot of time 🤣
Great video my friend!!!
Thanks so much 😁
That explains why Cura does an auto scale when I import STL files exported from Blender.
👍🏻 Hopefully this has helped in that case
Very good video ! i have one question ! if i set it up to metric or none ..when i add a cube ..it still show 0.002 m in the item dimension ! how do i fix that ?
Thanks you !!
Hmm.... that's very odd. Thag shouldn't be the case if you have none. For example mine shows up as "2".
@@ArtisansofVaul woow that a quick reply ! awesome ..! thank you sir ! well at least i can always do like you show at the end of the video ..exporting stl file and transforme scale , it work very well to.
haha !
@LUMINAK No problem at all. I'm just frustrated I can't offer more help. Maybe save the file and then come back into it to see if that works (though you shouldn't have to do that). Hopefully you find a way to sort it.
@@ArtisansofVaul I understand , no worries mate ! :) very appreciated ,keep up the good work ! subscribed ! you got a lot of very useful tutorial for blender ! mostly for hard surface modeling . I am very good at organic sculpting ! also new to sculpting but, i got lot of potential . hmm i would like to share a picture ...you wont be disappointed . haha !
@@TheLuminak Please do! Sculpting is something I need to work on. It's probably easiest to find me on something like Instagram for sharing pictures.
Am I missing something? I design in mm workspace, export to Cura and never have a problem. Scale is always perfect.
Probably not. Some programs will handle it ok, others won't. So it depends what you're using.
I'm using Blender, I had to think about it for a minute, my work space set to open at mm at .001
I think that is the answer to my question.
Another problem with Blender doing things in the mm scale is that it tends to make physics simulations explode.
I had totally forgotten to mention that. Really good point, thanks for mentioning it 👍🏻
Спасибо за видео
Thankyou for watching 😁
I’m still so confused, I keep trying all this and my figure is still small and hasn’t increased in size
Is that because you have changed an existing file instead of starting from scratch? If it is, you could try making a new file set to no scale, then copy and past the object you want into this new file. I cant say I have ever had this issue but I did make my change over at the start of the file/design.
Yeah it’s a stl file I bought from esty and I’m tryna plug the file in and cut half of the of the print so it can print on my 3d printer properly
@@ArtisansofVaul I’ll add the helmet and it says it’s there but nothing will show on my end
@@IggyTheLighskinWonder is it in the object outliner?
@@ArtisansofVaul is that a certain setting?
Blender units are not specifically tied to any real world unit. They can be whatever you want them to be. You're really overthinking this
🤣 I think you might have missed the point of the video. You're completely right in that you can think of them however you want. But as a focus on 3D printing there is very specifically a way other computer software interprets the information Blender puts out in say an exported STL file. And that does give Blender units a real world unit. And if you're 3D printing that's very important as it saves you work/time/annoyance. Have you 3D printed from Blender created files?
I totally disagree, I have been designing and modeling in Blender for 3D printing for a few years and I have always setup my interface to work in millimeters. I have yet to have any of the issues you are claiming! I think your problem is NOT Blender it is the total shit slicer software you want to use! Try using a REAL slicer instead of this crap and NO it has very little in common with Chitubox, although I have absolutely no love for that slicer either but have and can use it and still do not experience the problems you are having with Anycubics hacked up crap slicer!
You can disagree all you want but did you even watch the video? I use the free versions of both lychee and chitubox interchangeably and in terms of import scale, they are both perfectly fine taking my items that are designed in blender (in "meters" that I think of as millimeters) and they import them, again as as shown in the video, at 100% scale and they measure correctly in mm and print correctly in mm when checked with my digital calipers. Sorry you think the most widely used and easily accessible slicer programs are bad? Which one do you use, you failed to mention. It is also worth noting that if you really are hung up on what the made up unit number says in blender, a third way to make it work in most other normal slicers that everyone uses that take a "1 unit" and consider it a mm is by going into the Scene Properties tab, going into Unit System settings and then under where it shows Metric selected, you can also change the unit scale there as well to show 0.001 and then set that as your default start up as you would with any other preferred settings. But quite frankly as most slicer softwares I am aware of are seeing STL file numerical units and reading them as mm, there is going to be an issue if you do not use the same default numerical value Blender has called "meters" if you're not adjusting your Blender unit scale.
I'm glad you haven't had any of these issues but I (and others is seems from the comments and various forums) do. Do you also find your physics simulations working well as that's another issue I forgot to mention?
I'm curious what slicer you use? As shown in the video I use Lychee but I'm always happy to hear about different programs to try. And yeah, the Anycubic slicer is horrible (though I haven't used it in years at this point to know if it's changed).