Imported Mesh "Non-manifold and/or not watertight error

[CNCZACK]

I went and scanned a part in and exported the .stl and opened it in mastercam. Anything I try doing with it via the Mesh tab or using it in stock setup doesnt seem to work. Any suggestions on getting this usable as a solid model? 

[crazy^millman]

47 minutes ago, CNCZACK said:

I went and scanned a part in and exported the .stl and opened it in mastercam. Anything I try doing with it via the Mesh tab or using it in stock setup doesnt seem to work. Any suggestions on getting this usable as a solid model? 

Huh? Scanned a model using what software? What is the point cloud density? What was the filter set at for collection? The software you scanned it with is what needs to make the solid not Mastercam. Mastercam will work with the stl to machine the part, but converting it to a solid no sir you just stepped off into the holy grail of things asking for that. Did the sales person who sold you Mastercam make such a promise?

[CNCZACK]

6 minutes ago, crazy^millman said:

Huh? Scanned a model using what software? What is the point cloud density? What was the filter set at for collection? The software you scanned it with is what needs to make the solid not Mastercam. Mastercam will work with the stl to machine the part, but converting it to a solid no sir you just stepped off into the holy grail of things asking for that. Did the sales person who sold you Mastercam make such a promise?

Scanned in with poly works as well as used geo magic. its the first time i ever scanned in anything and the drafting guys dont exactly know what im trying to do as far as making it into a model so were both stuck at the moment on how to accomplish it 

[crazy^millman]

1 minute ago, CNCZACK said:

Scanned in with poly works as well as used geo magic. its the first time i ever scanned in anything and the drafting guys dont exactly know what im trying to do as far as making it into a model so were both stuck at the moment on how to accomplish it 

Polyworks with the Geomagic is your best bet here if you are needing a solid.

[CNCZACK]

7 minutes ago, crazy^millman said:

Polyworks with the Gromagic is your best bet here if you are needing a solid.

have you ever used anything of the sorts to make a solid and if so is it worth it? 

[Chally72]

1 hour ago, CNCZACK said:

I went and scanned a part in and exported the .stl and opened it in mastercam. Anything I try doing with it via the Mesh tab or using it in stock setup doesnt seem to work. Any suggestions on getting this usable as a solid model? 

The mesh will need to be checked and cleaned up before you can use any of the more advanced mesh commands. Use the Check Mesh tool to analyze the mesh and view where errors are. With a raw scan, you probably have a LOT of errors, overlapping facets, etc, that need to be cleaned up. In 2023, Check Mesh will also allow you to delete the problem facets. With 2022, you'll have to manually clean up any problem facets.

You can use meshes in a fair few areas of the software, including toolpaths, so don't give up and resign yourself to only considering solids. 

If you search for "Mesh" on the Mastercam youtube page, there are quite a few videos showing how to clean, trim, and manipulate meshes.

[crazy^millman]

1 minute ago, CNCZACK said:

have you ever used anything of the sorts to make a solid and if so is it worth it? 

Yes Verisurf when I was the Master3DGage Product Manager. Polyworks with Geomagic is their competition and they are good at what they do. Problem normally comes down to how the data was collected and what are the outliers? Was the data collected uniformly and filtered correctly? Are there Geometric shapes that were hard measured along with the scanned data if the part had them to help for creating a good reference system for Geometric shape fitting? Problem still exist that people think scanned data is the end all and not geometric shapes should be collected with shape fitting process during the collection of the date of they have only gotten a laser scanning device that doesn't have hard probing capabilities to fit correct geometric shapes and verify them back to the collected data. You have a 3.010 diameter feature on the part then hard probe it and then verify it. If the scanner is collecting and showing you that you have a 3.010 diameter feature by 2" long and giving you that as a fitted geometric shape then great, but nothing I have seen from anything as of late is doing that yet. They are still doing everything free from for fitting and not determining what are correctly fit geometric shapes and giving you those features.

[Colin Gilchrist]

You should not need to create a "solid model", just to machine the geometry. Mastercam will apply toolpaths to a "Mesh Entity", just like a solid.

The issue with a Mesh, is that it is made up of small polygons. There are no "curved surfaces" in a Mesh. Only a collection of triangles, where each 'facet' has a normal direction, pointing "outwards" from the hollow interior of the Mesh.

Both Polyworks and Geomagics have tools in them, to convert sections of your Mesh into "CAD Geometry" (boundaries, planes, curves, arcs, surfaces, etc.)

Both Polyworks and Geomagics will do a much better/cleaner job of creating CAD Geometry from your Mesh. There are a limited set of tools in Mastercam to accomplish this, and it will involve generating simple wireframe geometry, using the Mesh verticies, which you can then use to build up a Solid, through the normal solid modeling commands, but this is a "ground up" process. There is no magic button in Mastercam to recognize CAD features on the mesh, and have it auto-create actual CAD geometry. Both Polyworks and Geomagics have tools available to semi-automate this process.

https://www.innovmetric.com/products/polyworks-modeler

Having used both softwares you mentioned, my preference is to work in Polyworks, but I haven't touched either software since about 2011, so I have no idea what has changed or improved in either package.

Mastercam has recently added a new "Mesh Ribbon" to the software, which does allow you to work with, repair, and manipulate mesh entities, but the tools are still fairly rudimentary when it comes to working with faceted data.

 

[Pete Rimkus from CNC Software Inc.]

When opening the STL file into Mastercam, the Options page that is available lets you do some cleanup on the way in.

[CNCZACK]

45 minutes ago, Colin Gilchrist said:

You should not need to create a "solid model", just to machine the geometry. Mastercam will apply toolpaths to a "Mesh Entity", just like a solid.

The issue with a Mesh, is that it is made up of small polygons. There are no "curved surfaces" in a Mesh. Only a collection of triangles, where each 'facet' has a normal direction, pointing "outwards" from the hollow interior of the Mesh.

Both Polyworks and Geomagics have tools in them, to convert sections of your Mesh into "CAD Geometry" (boundaries, planes, curves, arcs, surfaces, etc.)

Both Polyworks and Geomagics will do a much better/cleaner job of creating CAD Geometry from your Mesh. There are a limited set of tools in Mastercam to accomplish this, and it will involve generating simple wireframe geometry, using the Mesh verticies, which you can then use to build up a Solid, through the normal solid modeling commands, but this is a "ground up" process. There is no magic button in Mastercam to recognize CAD features on the mesh, and have it auto-create actual CAD geometry. Both Polyworks and Geomagics have tools available to semi-automate this process.

https://www.innovmetric.com/products/polyworks-modeler

Having used both softwares you mentioned, my preference is to work in Polyworks, but I haven't touched either software since about 2011, so I have no idea what has changed or improved in either package.

Mastercam has recently added a new "Mesh Ribbon" to the software, which does allow you to work with, repair, and manipulate mesh entities, but the tools are still fairly rudimentary when it comes to working with faceted data.

 

i just found out we only have the inspection side of poly works. im going to find out some more info directly from geomagic and go from there. i just want it to save time and be more accurate than hand measuring everything and still being off at the end of the day. 

[CNCZACK]

31 minutes ago, Pete Rimkus from CNC Software Inc. said:

When opening the STL file into Mastercam, the Options page that is available lets you do some cleanup on the way in.

usually ill just merge it. do you just open the stl with mastercam? 

[Chally72]

1 hour ago, Colin Gilchrist said:

You should not need to create a "solid model", just to machine the geometry. Mastercam will apply toolpaths to a "Mesh Entity", just like a solid.

The issue with a Mesh, is that it is made up of small polygons. There are no "curved surfaces" in a Mesh. Only a collection of triangles, where each 'facet' has a normal direction, pointing "outwards" from the hollow interior of the Mesh.

Both Polyworks and Geomagics have tools in them, to convert sections of your Mesh into "CAD Geometry" (boundaries, planes, curves, arcs, surfaces, etc.)

Both Polyworks and Geomagics will do a much better/cleaner job of creating CAD Geometry from your Mesh. There are a limited set of tools in Mastercam to accomplish this, and it will involve generating simple wireframe geometry, using the Mesh verticies, which you can then use to build up a Solid, through the normal solid modeling commands, but this is a "ground up" process. There is no magic button in Mastercam to recognize CAD features on the mesh, and have it auto-create actual CAD geometry. Both Polyworks and Geomagics have tools available to semi-automate this process.

https://www.innovmetric.com/products/polyworks-modeler

Having used both softwares you mentioned, my preference is to work in Polyworks, but I haven't touched either software since about 2011, so I have no idea what has changed or improved in either package.

Mastercam has recently added a new "Mesh Ribbon" to the software, which does allow you to work with, repair, and manipulate mesh entities, but the tools are still fairly rudimentary when it comes to working with faceted data.

 

 

If the end goal doesn't involve creating a solid or trying to mimic/get back to prismatic shapes, the mesh tools within Mastercam are some of the more advanced I've used outside of a dedicated package. The Titans of CNC Octopus is one public example- a single large (1 million polygon) mesh file taken through the entire machining process without the need to create a solid:

 

Using the mesh smoothing commands to create "clean core" entities to drive the tool vector control over the crenellations of the octopus scan, while still using the original mesh to drive the tool linear position:

 

Using Smooth and Refine to boost polygon count in areas of low resolution and to clean up the shape, like the eye:

 

[CNCZACK]

2 hours ago, Chally72 said:

 

If the end goal doesn't involve creating a solid or trying to mimic/get back to prismatic shapes, the mesh tools within Mastercam are some of the more advanced I've used outside of a dedicated package. The Titans of CNC Octopus is one public example- a single large (1 million polygon) mesh file taken through the entire machining process without the need to create a solid:

 

Using the mesh smoothing commands to create "clean core" entities to drive the tool vector control over the crenellations of the octopus scan, while still using the original mesh to drive the tool linear position:

 

Using Smooth and Refine to boost polygon count in areas of low resolution and to clean up the shape, like the eye:

 

So, from what im gather just by the screen images they drive a surface over the mesh body? I just need accuracy within .05" or so just enough to get started and to see that our castings are correct and good to slap a toolpath on. I just dont want to put in a potential 2-4 hours into something i can measure and draw up in the same period of time. 

[Chally72]

These are all using the mesh directly in toolpath creation- there are no surfaces in the above images- only meshes.

There is no surface created from the mesh, nor is this possible within standalone Mastercam. Packages like Verisurf are where you start seeing mesh to surface / mesh to solid capabilities.

 

Your success in using meshes in your application will be highly dependent on how your raw scans come in and what you're using to generate the scans. Are they clean enough that you can perform a little housekeeping and then proceed with using them, or are they messy, with flyer facets and topology issues making up a large portion of the data?

[crazy^millman]

22 minutes ago, Chally72 said:

These are all using the mesh directly in toolpath creation- there are no surfaces in the above images- only meshes.

There is no surface created from the mesh, nor is this possible within standalone Mastercam. Packages like Verisurf are where you start seeing mesh to surface / mesh to solid capabilities.

 

Your success in using meshes in your application will be highly dependent on how your raw scans come in and what you're using to generate the scans. Are they clean enough that you can perform a little housekeeping and then proceed with using them, or are they messy, with flyer facets and topology issues making up a large portion of the data?

In other word junk in yields junk out.

[Verisurf - Ernie Husted]

Verisurf within Mastercam is your best bet if you are needing a solid from a Mesh.

Toolpaths on a Mesh works great in Mastercam 2023, if you need surface smoother just refine the mesh with smaller triangles. 

Ernie



 

 

[volitan71]

If your model is not dimensional but more aesthetic like the octopus or something like that, I recently used a month subscription to Carveco ($50 I think) for something like that, you might want to look at. It is what Artcam used to be. The tools to smooth out surfaces are so intuitive and easy to use it was a pleasure to work with. I had a hand made medallion with some artwork 3d scanned and had to machine it.

You can Smooth, Sharpen and even add material with tools very similar to "spray painting" in Microsoft Paint. You can zoom in and do tiny areas alone if you want. There's a lot more it can do like copying sections, separating sections with a "cookie cutter" tool of your own shape... Really great piece of software for meshes.