To fix this, visualize the normals by selecting the faces in Cinema 4D. This means that a surface of your model is facing in the wrong direction (towards the inside of the object instead of the outside). In this case, you don’t need to assign any wall thicknesses as your entire 3D print will be solid inside.Ĩ: Inverted Normals – Fixing Reversed FacesĪnother problem that can occur are so-called inward-facing or reversed faces. If you have one enclosed object (let’s say a solid cube) without any holes, your ‘wall’ will simply be your entire model. If you want to learn more about how thick your walls need to be exactly, make sure to read this blog post.Ī quick and easy way to add wall thickness is to select the Extrude Tool, choose a Maximum Angle of 91° and check the “ Preserve Groups” and “ Create Caps” options. The picture below shows a model with paper-thin surfaces (not printable, left) and a solid object with thick walls (printable, right). Without setting a wall thickness, a 3D printer has no information about how thick or how thin it is supposed to print your part. In order to make your Cinema 4D model printable, you need to ensure that each and every surface of your model has a wall thickness. 7: Wall Thickness – Making Sure Your Walls Are Printable

Sometimes this extra geometry is hard to spot since it is located inside the model (see step 5 of this tutorial). This will highlight any unwanted extra faces or edges that might cause problems. Next thing you should do is check the “ Non Manifold” box. This will show you the “holes” in the mesh of your models, which keep them from being watertight.Ĭheck if your model will be 3D printable. Enable “ Mesh Check” and “ Boundary Edges” and uncheck all other options. Open the Attribute Manager and then choose Mode – Modeling – Mesh Checking Tab. You can identify issues with watertightness by using Mesh Checking. Luckily for us, Cinema 4D has a tool that shows us exactly where those holes are. You can clearly see that there is a big gap in its surface. The design below is an example of a model that is not watertight.

Ask yourself the question: if I were to put water inside my model, would it flow out? If that’s the case then you need to find those holes and close them. For example, your model needs to be watertight. This is where key geometry issues come into play. 6: Making your Model Watertight & ManifoldĬreating a design for 3D printing means that your Cinema 4D model has to be able to exist in the real world.

Merging unprintable objects (left) together for 3D printing (right) with Magic Merge.

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