Merging Meshes and 3D Printing
The goal of this assignment was to practice using meshes in Rhino3D.
PART 1: MERGING MESHES
First thing I did was go to Thingiverse and download two meshes, this PacMan Ghost and this Top Hat. I wanted to merge the Top Hat with the PacMan Ghost so that the ghost would be wearing the top hat, so I exported the two files to Rhino. I reduced the polygon count of the meshes to make everything easier for me to work with.
First thing I did was go to Thingiverse and download two meshes, this PacMan Ghost and this Top Hat. I wanted to merge the Top Hat with the PacMan Ghost so that the ghost would be wearing the top hat, so I exported the two files to Rhino. I reduced the polygon count of the meshes to make everything easier for me to work with.
Merging the two meshes proved much harder than I thought it would. The top hat is a closed mesh with a hollow space in the middle, so when I merged it with the ghost it still had that empty space inside it, as well as overlapping parts. Basically, it was a bad mesh. I could not figure out how to fill in the top hat, so I opted to make my own since it's only two shapes and really not that complicated.
I was able to create my own top hat easily by making two solids, turning them into meshes, and then using MeshBooleanUnion. I also sized it so it was look good on the ghost's head.
I decided to get a little creative and cut the top off the ghost where I wanted the top hat to go. I did this by cover the part I wanted to keep with the top hat and using MeshTrim, with the hat as my cutting object and the ghost to be cut. I'm now realizing I probably did not need to do this but I the time I thought it was necessary.
Because I cut the top off my ghost, it was no longer a closed mesh, so I used Cap to close it off.
After that I used MeshBooleanUnion again to merge the ghost with the top hat.
I made sure the Ghost Wearing a Top Hat passed the checks for rapid prototyping by checking the Object Description. As you can see in the image, they are a Valid Mesh.
I also checked the Mesh Repair, where I can confirm that This is a Good Mesh.
Ghost is so happy with their top hat!!