Preparing my cad models for making

due to the brief there are certain ways that i can create my prototype models. for the sculpture i have to use the laser cutter and for the merchandise i have to use the 3D printer. because of this once the models are created i have to prepare them in a couple of ways so they can be ready for the machines.

3D Printing

to enable the 3D printer to read my product i have to make a few adjustments. to start with there can be no parts of your product inside another part so the model just has to be a 'skin' of what the product is. this means that the model has to just be the aesthetics of the product so it is just what it look like on the outside. to acheive this if you find any parts of your product you need to loose you split that part by the main body of the product and then delete the excess product. once all of that has been deleted you then use the showedges command this will highlight any un-joined edges. if any edges are not connect you then use the joinedge command. once you have completed this it is then time to turn your product to a mesh, this is so the 3d printer can understand what to print. from the drop down menus at the top select mesh and then mesh from NURBS object. a pop up box will then appear if you select few polygons this means that you final product will be very angular however if you select  more polygons the shape of the product will smooth out like below.

once you have turn your surface model into mesh form you can then save the file but as a stereolithography file to enable the printer to read it.

laser cutting 

due to the brief i have to create my sculpture model through the laser cutter. this involves splitting the cad models 6 mm apart. this is because the acrylic i will be using is 6 mm wide. to do this i firstly had to line all three caribeners up on one axis. i chose the z axis. i then drew lines 6 mm apart across the width of my the three caribeners. once i had done this i then had to split the lines by the models this made cross sections of my model which could then be imported into the laser cutting software as below.

once your model looks like this it is time to save. when saving the file format needs to be an auto cad drawing exchange file, or a dxf file. my models aren't complete caribener shapes, this is because once they have been cut i need to link them together and them glue them back into shape. i have chose to put the small cut in the middle to save material.