Creating a hollow model with MeshLab
Creating a hollow model with MeshLab is not about repair issues, but it is about the modifications necessary for proper preparation of a model that is intended for a commercial 3D printing service. Most of these services charge by calculating the volume of material required to print the design. In this case, by making a model hollow, it will decrease the volume of material necessary and greatly decrease the cost of the print job.
Getting ready
You'll need MeshLab and the support test model we made in Chapter 6, Making the Impossible. It looks like the following image:
How to do it...
We will proceed as follows:
- Select the Show Layer Dialog icon.
- Go to Filters and select Remeshing, Simplification, and Reconstruction. Scroll down to the next cascaded window and select Uniform Mesh Resampling.
- From the pop up, change the Precision (abs and %) field to
1.0in World Unit. Change Offset (abs and %) to-3.0. Check Clean Vertices and Multisample. Click on Apply...
