Seperate Connected Surfaces - Doesn't work

[johnyelland1234]

Hello,

I bought Simplify3D yesterday to print Lithophane lamp shades mainly.

The lamp shade STL I eventually download are actually 2 seperate meshes in the same file. When I print, I get a gap between the shade and the support arms as the meshes intersect.

Now, I load the file into Simplify3D and use the Seperate Connected Surfaces command. The software then just hangs and doesn't respond. The STL itself is 130mb.

Surely it can handle that?!

I put in in Cura, sliced it and it's all done in a couple of minutes.

My laptop is more than fast enough (i9 10th gen, 32GB Ram).

Any tips? It's been giving me the blue circle on Simplify3D for about 10 minutes now. I want to use it, as it's about 25% faster to print these gcodes thatn the ones provided by Cura. But this seems like a basic thing that should be easily managed within the software.

[dkightley]

Separate Connected Surfaces DOES work. I've been using it ever since it was introduced into S3D...and I've recommended its use here on the forum probably close to a hundred times!

Try loading the shape file into 3D Builder ( the free Win10 app). If it loads, it will have automatically sorted out the mesh issues. If it completes, save the shape as a .3mf type file, and then load that into S3D.

Alternatively, try repairing the shape with NettFab.