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Hi guys,
until now I fixed issues with Windows 3D Builder, which did its job very well in a few minutes. Small issues were also fixeable in Lychee directly.

Now I got my hands on a lot of Studio Historia STLs and they are chock full of holes and errors...

3D Builder takes hours to fix a file and completely gives up on some. Meshmixer seems to make everything worse, rather then fixing issues.
Lychee only is able to fix a few of the holes, leaving many errors.
Tried online services like Formlabs (?) which also wasn't able to fix files...

Do you know some good, reliable and possibly free tool to fix errors in STLs? Prefferably drag and drop, not fiddle-around-for-hours-searching-for-every-issue type.

Thank you!

If you can find the old version of NetFabb before it was bought by Autodesk, that was a pretty good program. Not quite drag and drop, but Import>Repair>whatever dialogs pop up>Export. It looks like there is a demo of the Autodesk version that might still be a good program, though I'm perfectly happy with my crusty old version so I don't know what they might have changed.

I thought Netfab was what 3D builder plugged into. I’m afraid if the files are so busted that the simple stuff does t work, the. They are likely to need professional intervention :(


Automatically Appended Next Post:
On a more helpful note, have you tried the Prusa slicing software? It also has an automated repair function that might be sufficiently different to work.

Probably, a lot of programs licensed or were 'strongly inspired' by NetFabb. That being said, there were various levels of how well it was integrated. I'm guessing that there were only certain things they wanted out of it and not the full experience.

PreForm licensed it and was pretty good at it working, but every now and again there would be a mesh it didn't like. Throw the same mesh into NetFabb and it would repair it no problem. That being said, I can't really think of any time NetFabb couldn't repair something, but if I needed to go back and work on something that had been repaired wacky things could have been done to the mesh. Any kind of clean topology would for sure be gone, for example.

Meshmixer is good once you get a hang of the settings so you don't lose the nice sharp edges.

I tend to use 3d builder for quick fixes but if it's taking a while, I'll run it through meshmixer then maybe back through 3d builder.

I did have an incident where 3d builder saw meshmixer's fixes as an error and meshmixer saw 3d builder's fixes as an error.

Thanks for all the tips, will look into these!
As they showed printed and painted figures on the KS page, they must be printable, so I'll keep trying.
Good thing my printer just decided to ask for a releveling of the build plate (half of it comes out empty), so it'll be a few days until I can test the new versions out...
Still the best hobby purchase of the last few years!

Are the files that are showing the errors the STLs without supports or the STLs with presupports?

If its the latter ignore the hole reports as they are likely within the support mesh itself and a non-issue; just a result of the way that slicers export their support structures as STL.

If its the former then go through the layers in your slicer (esp lychee) and see if you can see very tiny random dots or other oddities as you move up and down through the model. If you see nothing abnormal at all, the file might well be fine enough to print.

The issue with holes is that they "can" cause a fail with the slicer or they can be totally fine or they can throw an error randomly.
So clean meshes are best

Lychee is also sensitive whilst Chitubox is far less so and as a result people might not see the errors to know they are there when using chitu over lychee.


If you slice the files check the sliced file in Chitubox or UVTools and make sure it looks good.

Prusa Slicer

Simplify model (extra high detail), then fix via windows repair algorithm.

The simplify step is needed to get rid of the millions of extra unnecessary polygons and have the repair step run in a reasonable amount of time.

As a sculptor I make sure to have everything fixed before offering it for sale, but many sculptors coming from a video game background don't always follow up with the extra steps needed for something to be print-ready. If it's throwing non-manifold errors, it shouldn't be for sale, and sites like MMF have that as a requirement before you can sell on there.

The nuclear option is taking the STL into blender and applying a voxel remesh modifier to it, can take a while but will give something fixed at the end of it.

Is there a particular campaign giving you problems? I recently printed off a couple of armies from their Sons of Yamato V1 & 2 and the British Early War campaign without any significant issues that I can recall.

My process is super basic, just importing the not supported version into Chitubox, rotating and adding autosupports.

Slicers can do the job done with undrepared STLs, but I have to share "fixed" models. Used NETFABB online service before, but its no more. Used program Netfabb then but now impossible under sanctions. Windows built-in 3d editor also not available. Any alternatives? Can't believe too many 3d print modellers and all rely only on Netfabb or do raw STLs

Download the demo for autodesk
https://www.autodesk.com/products/netfabb/overview

If its still working as it did before the demo basically doesn't "end" on the netfabb part of it


Another option is to use this
https://github.com/3DprintFIT/netfabb-basic-download/releases

Guide for getting the free version of Netfab and setting it up for lychee to use

First

Download the netfabb zip file appropriate for your system (curtesy of 3dken)

Run the installer, it may just be called netfabb in the zip folder.

Once done that open lychee, go to preferences, scroll to the bottom to External tools, and then change the directory to match where you unzipped.

Now when you repair in lychee it will make use of netfab for better results

Have you tried asking Studio Historia how they prep their files for print? Make it as public as possible.

scarletsquig wrote:

The nuclear option is taking the STL into blender and applying a voxel remesh modifier to it, can take a while but will give something fixed at the end of it.

+1 I was going to post this. I have a beefy comp so it's usually pretty quick for me, but I'm not sure what others are running so be warned, I could get slow. I've never had it *not* fix everything on a model though.

What programs that people are using to create 3D files are more likely to cause these sorts of errors? Just curious.

GrimPunk wrote:
What programs that people are using to create 3D files are more likely to cause these sorts of errors? Just curious.

You can get errors generated from any 3D sculpting software. Sometimes its the result of incorrect exporting of the file; incorrect sculpting and so on and so forth. Any software can create these errors just like a proper workflow can avoid most of them.