Shelling v drawing wall thicknesses
For those of you scratching your head, I am debating whether it is better to "shell" a model, using something like Magix to hollow a part, or to simply draft the model with a particular wall thickness so it is already hollow.
The reason for doing either is to reduce the material wasted in printing, decrease drying time, and reduce overall weight of the completed product.
I think you can save more material by drafting with a particualr wall thickness if you are making a standalone building, but it seems easier to shell the model if you are integrating a terrain section.
I noticed that sweet onion creations was doing something all together different, likely because they are using SketchUp which makes terrain generation fairly difficult, but what says the masses?
Which are you using and why?
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I find that shelling a model
I find that shelling a model in Magics in 100 times easier than trying to draw the building hollow, especially if the building is complex.
We did a lot of hollow drawing prior to being introduced to resurfacing and Magics. Basically, you get a lot of interior "garbage" that is difficult to get rid of. It requires many, many more boolean operations and more often than not, resulted in some sort of corrupt geometry. A typical example of this is lots of intersecting roof planes, dormers, sheds, etc.
Resurfacing and hollowing in magics creates a part that has a uniform shell thickness. It is cleaner and easier to process once it has been removed form the 3d printer. Another benefit of this that we found, is a stronger part.
Here are some pictures to show the differnce of hollowing a part in Magics versus tryin to draw it that way. This model was a mixed used residential/commercial project. I originally drew it in Rhino.
On another note, if you draw to a specific shell, you are limited to it's final output scale. If you try to repoduce a 1"=8' model at 1"=50', the shell will be too thin, at least for Z-Corp printers.