Alignment of face(s)

[karossii]

In playing with the demo, I have a major issue...trying to import an stl model which has a specific desired alignment, but comes in off kilter. I can't seem to make sure the desired 'front' or 'top' of the model is perfectly flat.

Say it was a cube, when it imports one edge is higher than the other. If I sliced it, all of the carves would be at a slight angle...wasting not only carve time and bit usage, but wood.

By manually rotating, I can theoretically flatten it out. But in my experience so far, it seems to always remain slightly off.

I'm looking for some way to select a face, and click a button, and have it set to perfectly flat from there...is that a feature I'm missing?

[oscarl48]

karossi, I did a quick experiment this morning to attempt to replicate your experience. I exported a cube that I knew was perfectly flat into the CW designer. It was perfectly flat in the CW designer.

So far my experience has been designer does a very good job of creating a pattern of whatever I input. Now the input could be garbage but the output is a good representation of the garbage I inputted.

My initial thought is not all stl's are the same. The exported stl geometry could be very different depending if the topology is composed of quads, triangles or n-gons.

What software are you using for the stl creation?

[karossii]

I know the issue lies with the stl - it is a download of a model made for 3D printing (and it wasn't actually a cube, that was just an example).

Another issue I had was a multiple faceted object (icosahedron), which I'd hoped could be rotated and sliced cleanly on multiple non-profit90 degrees faces.

In both cases, I'd like to be able to select a face and have it made perfectly flat.

[bergerud]

Give Meshlab a try. It has an alignment of principle axis which might do what you need.

[oscarl48]

If the model is freely available for download can you post the website address. I can do a quick re-mesh attempt to see what kind of results I can get.

Blender 3d can completely remesh models but the techniques vary from hitting a button on the quick side to manually re-meshing the entire surface for the time consuming highly detailed side. I have found the results can be hit or miss on quality.

[cestout]

You can tweak the alignment in STL importer.
Clint