Week 3 - SolidWorks

Kaitlin and Becca's Documentation

This step is in preparation for printing. We use MeshLab to prepare the .stl file from SolidWorks and remove any duplicates or inverted faces and vertices so the printing process will work.

This week we downloaded the newest version of MeshLab from sourceforge.net, this version was released on February 10, 2010. We took the models from the models from the last two weeks and removed duplicate vertices and faces, merged close vertices, and removed non-manifold faces and vertices.

We had more trouble with the second week's model, the VI. We got an error about removing manifold faces because they are required for orientability. Removing non-manifold faces and vertices resulted in part of the V being removed and a face on the I being removed.

Merging close vertices before removing the non-manifold vertices results in fewer faces being removed and the hole being smaller.

The smaller hole can be repaired with the fill hole feature.