"Tool to 'shrinkwrap' a 3D model" Topic

I downloaded a model of a truck from Thingiverse. Unfortunately, the model has too much detail – as well as the outer skin, inside the model there is a hollow for the cabin with seats etc. This detail makes the model almost impossible to print – sometimes walls are too thin, internal supports are needed, etc.

Is there a tool that can 'shrinkwrap' the model -- produce a solid object preserving the outer skin?

I could use Meshmixer to go into the model and remove some of the detail, but there is so much detail that is impractical.

I've found that some combination of "solidify" and "remesh" in Blender can work well!

It really depends on the modelling software you're using.

I think those tools let you look at the mesh and delete some of the triangles. If you delete the inside triangles you'll have just the outer shape. This can also be useful in removing detail. It does mean spending an hour…

You can "fill" empty space within a model before you splice it.

Dan – that is exactly what I am trying to do – fill the empty space. But do you know of a tool where that is easy? I can approximate by merging cubes with the cab and back of the truck – but that will still leave odd shaped voids that will cause issues.

Nick: it depends on the item you are printing. If you are willing to tell me the file you are trying to print, I can get a copy from Thingiverse and look it over.

You can also take a look at increasing the "infill" (on a Prusa 3D printer you can use 0% to 100%.

Please note that if the item being printed is a certain size and you scale it up or down, you may find that the file is unable to do so depending on how it is written. I've tried to scale a Hs-129 from Thinkiverse and failed repeatedly. The open area cockpit will not scale right as the fuselage walls are too thin if not printed at the scale the designer made it. Filling it will not work as it is the outer "skin" of the aircraft that is not printing correctly.

Ahh! I'm not quite 50 yet but my memory is crap lately. I had an ok method for doing this a few months ago when I was working on my 1/285 WW2 minis. Couldn't find everything I wanted in close enough scale to resize without issues. I thought I had made a note of all the different things I tried but took me awhile to find where the file was saved.

First thing I did in Blender was Alt S (shrink/fatten) to bulk up the size of the details a bit. And then M (merge) to get rid of some of the vertices and remove details that didn't want to print.

As an example with an stl of a german scout car. The left one was simply rescaled from 1/100 to 1/285. Pretty bad. The one on the right I loaded into Blender and simply hit Alt S, 0.3 then M, 0.03 (settings I decide on after a bunch of trial and error). Turned out respectable for a 1/4" long mini printed with an fdm printer.

And now I seem to have forgotten how to show pics on the forum. Sheesh it's only been a few months since I posted dozens.