Translations:Manual:Preparing models for 3D printing/4/en

From FreeCAD Documentation
  • Making sure that your 3D objects are solid. Real-world objects are solid, the 3D model must be solid too. We saw in earlier chapters that FreeCAD helps you a lot in that regard, and that the PartDesign Workbench will notify you if you do an operation that prevents your model to stay solid. The Part Workbench also contains a Check Geometry tool that is handy to check further for possible defects.
  • Making sure about the dimensions of your objects. One millimeter will be one millimeter in real-life. Every dimension matters.
  • Controlling the degradation. No 3D printing or CNC milling system can take FreeCAD files directly. Most of them will only understand a machine language called G-Code. G-code has dozens of different dialects, each machine or vendor usually has its own. The conversion of your models into G-Code can be easy and automatic, but you can also do it manually, with total control over the output. In any case, some loss of quality of your model will unavoidably occur during the process. When printing in 3D, you must always make sure this loss of quality stays below your minimum requirements.