Advice on editing STL files of bones

daniel_reale
Tue, 05 Mar 2024 20:24:03 +0000
Support

Well,

So I’m doing my final year project, and as part of it I’ve been printing various versions of the same femur. I had one with the internal cavities, I’ve had one that’s solid throughout, I’ve had big ones and small ones etc etc. The latest version was one that had been sliced in half length ways, this was good as It cut down on supports and it helped improve the print quality of both faces.

All of this was done just using 3D slicer and the STL’s it exported, however right now (Unless I’m just not thinking smart enough lol) I think I’ve reached a roadblock. So the final variation I’m hoping to make is either 1. The two halves, where one half has two holes and the other has two matching pegs so they can clip together… or 2. Two halves with holes that I can print separate dowls for.

This seems simple enough, however:

1. The STL’s that 3D slicer exports are too complex and far too curvy for Fusion 360 to convert into 3d models. Decimating the models before exporting does not help this issue, I also want to avoid decimating as much as possible to avoid loss of surface info.

2. I’ve tried converting the STL’s in DWG’s to use in autocad, but again all of the faces make it far too complex to work with. I was mainly considering using Autocad so I could be numerically certain that everything was the right size and was placed correctly.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how I could go about this? I’m sure someone has tried to accomplish something similar on here.

3 posts - 3 participants