Repairing Meshes
A good start is to try Rhino's built-in mesh repair. This is very helpful for resolving small errors, for example if there's a stray point or a duplicate unused edge.
Select a mesh and use the command
[MeshRepair].
- 1.Check the Mesh, ignore the first Repair Mesh command and press Next to access the first repair menu.
- 2.Repair Menu 1: is great for doing mesh clean-up, tick all the boxes and click Repair.
- 3.Repair Menu 2: provides an interface for accessing these Rhino commands. These may not always work and require manual Mesh Manipulation.
For most cases, quick manual fixes are easier to control than using auto-repair. Mesh objects are easily manipulated unlike NURBs objects, you can simply access their sub-objects and transform them like you would any other object.
When just moving and 'joining' vertices or edges or faces together to fix things like small gaps, you can select its sub-vertices/edges/faces using
[Ctrl+Shift+LMB]Faces can be flipped using the
[Flip] command.You can create new face geometry through usual nurbs methods and mesh them, or alternatively you can use
[3DFace] to quickly make mesh faces. Use [Join] to add it to the mesh.For bad meshes that are proving to be difficult to troubleshoot the following services and software may be useful in repairing naked edges and non-manifold edges. Once the mesh has been repaired the file should still be checked as there still may be a possibility that the 'repaired mesh' is still bad.
Pre-installed on all Windows, otherwise please install through the Microsoft Store app, importing bad meshes will automatically prompt a fix.
To attempt to repair a mesh:
- 1.Open > Load Object and Select your files to repair (common filetypes: .stl, .obj, .3mf, .ply)
- 2.Click Import in the top left.
- 3.You will see the object highlighted with a red base and a notification in the bottom right - attempt repair by selecting the object and then the notification.
- 4.The red base will disappear if the geometry has been fixed - but this does not mean that it is a valid mesh still, save it out and check it in your 3D software of choice to confirm.
Prusa slicer is a slicer used for our Open Access 3D printers, it has a version of Netfabb installed. As its main function is a slicer, this mesh repair feature is a niche but accessible way to access Netfabb.
- 1.Install Prusa Slicer, if the configuration menu appears, you may skip these options.
- 2.Import your .stl model by dragging+dropping into the 3D viewport or by going through the File menu. (You may get some warnings like your object is too big, but as you are only repairing the .stl, ignore these warnings.)
- 3.If there is an issue with the mesh, there will be a warning icon next to its name (usually found in the panel on the right.)
- 4.Right-click this icon to start the repair.
- 5.If the repair is successful, you can right-click the mesh in the viewport and export .stl.
Netfabb of the Autodesk suite is a powerful mesh repair tool. This software can be accessed through your Autodesk account provided by the university.
Last modified 6mo ago