With a new function called “Marching Cube,” the latest version of CoreTechnologie’s 3D printing software 4D_Additive repairs and simplifies 3D scan data and STL files into closed volumes, within the shortest space of time.

The feature allows any type of triangulated 3D model to be automatically corrected and prepared for 3D printing.

Simplified 3D Print preparation
Modern 3D printing is based on accurate CAD data but today more and more often on data generated with a 3D scanner. The quality of STL data is often poor and not suitable for 3D printing or other subsequent processes. To ensure error-free slicing and printing, it is necessary to repair errors on STL models and send closed solid models to the printer. In addition, scanned parts often have file sizes of several gigabytes due to the high number of very small triangles. Especially if several scanned files are to be printed in the same print job, the size of the data that must be sent to the machine can become a real problem.

The 4D_Additive 1.4 software has revolutionary functions to close the tessellated models into “watertight” solids and intelligently mesh reduction functions in order to reduce the number of triangles without losing accuracy. These new features called “Marching Cube” and “Mesh Simplification” allow any type of triangulated, mostly STL data, to be automatically corrected and simplified at the touch of a button.

Fast repair of scan data
With the innovative Marching Cube function, faulty STL models, as well as scan data, can be repaired and transformed into closed solids practically at the push of a button. The new function saves the user an extremely time-consuming manual repair. The Marching Cube function combines a “voxelisation” of the parts with their repair, whereby the size of the voxel, i.e. cube, and thus the fineness can be defined by the user. After the adaptive filling of the part volume with voxels, the so-called “voxilisation,” a closed 3D mesh is generated. The 4D_Additive software thus repairs models with hundreds and thousands of triangulation defects fully automatically within a few seconds.

In addition, the user has access to various options for the intelligent reduction of triangles. By defining a maximum angle between the triangles, the maximum chord deviation, by percentage reduction, or by defining the desired number of triangles the filesize and complexity of triangulated models can be reduced easily.

The use of the two new innovative functions makes it possible to repair any type of scanned part without manual effort, thus creating printable solids with reasonable file size and resolution from scans and faulty STL models in a very short time. In the future, this technology will certainly enable a significant simplification of the scanning and printing process in many areas.

The 3D printing software version is available now. Further information is available at www.coretechnologie.com/products/4d-additive