Do your 3D prints look a little like your printing (i.e. a little fugly?) Check out the Microsoft 3D Model Repair Service!

robmiles.com - Microsoft 3D Model Repair Service

..one of the problems with making 3D models is that sometimes you get bits of data in there that just don't make sense from a 3D point of view. Elements can intersect in odd ways or you might get tiny holes in meshes. These imperfections can cause all kinds of problems when you try to move from a model to a physical artifact.

Normally you need a person to go through and tidy the model it up, but Microsoft have a free, cloud based, service that will just accept your models and tidy them up for you. It's all free, and very useful. You can find it here.

Microsoft Model Repair Service

Use the Microsoft 3D Model Repair service powered by netfabb to repair STL, OBJ, or 3MF files automatically. Like a spellchecker, this service will save you time by taking care of the many common errors in 3D models that otherwise would require manual repair by a dedicated designer. The service closes holes in the model, fixes face normals, removes self-intersections, and more. You'll be more productive and be on your way to more reliable 3D manufacturing in minutes!

Just upload your STL, OBJ, or 3MF file. We'll check and fix the model and return you a new file, ready to print. Enjoy!

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About this service

The Model Repair Service is a solution tailored for the business process of 3D Printing and Additive Manufacturing. It is designed to automate and manage large volumes of 3D-model data to let you focus on the value adding processes and applications of your business.

The Model Repair Service can automatically address a large amount of tasks that normally would be handled manually and will reduce your costs while improving your speed of handling, quality and review of the data.

Analysis

The Model Repair Service can import and export files on a number of 3D formats including STL, OBJ, 3MF and others. The server software evaluates incoming files for errors and determines main properties of the files.

File analysis:

• Main dimensions, volume, surface area, outbox volume
• Number of triangles, border edges, shells and holes
• Degenerate faces and self-intersections

Repair

If desired, Microsoft-netfabb Cloud Services will automatically repair the files with a success rate of >95%.

Repair functions include:

• Stitching triangles
• Closing gaps
• Close holes
• Repair invalid orientations
• Remove self-intersections
• Remove shells with negative volume
• Remove double triangles
• Remove tiny shells
• Triangle reduction

API Connection

The API Connection enables the Model Repair Service to import and export files and file data to and from a user defined database. This is an essential function for production management, pricing, and quoting.

Use for business

Commercial use of the 3D Model Repair service

The Microsoft 3D Model Repair service has a suite of offerings for commercial customers to help you save time and money when preparing digital designs for 3D printing. As a commercial customer you can reserve space on our Azure cloud platform for fast and reliable processing of your 3D models. You can provide your designers and engineers with a web portal for inspecting and preparing their models for 3D printing (e.g. repairing holes, intersections, multiple shells, and more).

API Connection

The API Connection enables the Model Repair Service to import and export files and file data to and from a user defined database. This is an essential function for production management, pricing, and quoting.

Contact us

If you would like to learn more about the commercial offerings of the 3D model repair service, pricing and availability, please send email to ask3dprint@microsoft.com — we look forward to hearing from you.

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You totally know this is going to be a coming Coding4Fun Hardware Friday post don't you? (You all follow me there too, right?  ;) But until then I thought this more than cool enough to highlight here too...