Simplify3D User Forum

this is a peaked roof being printed. the green is a "top layer"? is there a way to make that green narrower in width? i'm not even sure what it's called as a feature for sure. no big deal.


ps i'm working on a huge project for work, i'm amazed at how quickly and easily i'm able to print stuff out... the process settings quick and easy, the layout. so i'm printing a building as 4 walls and a roof which will be glued together - with the feature that separates parts i'm able to detach the faces of my roof as a sub-object in my 3d program and separate them out in simplify3d easy peasy! it makes my modeling easier and i don't have to lay everything out in my modeling program.

You are correct that those sections are Top Layers. It helps to think about models like this as a sort of staircase after being sliced. The slices form a staircase effect with sloped surfaces like this. So each 'stair' will have a Top Layer condition set by the user that will need to be met. This means that directly below these 'stairs' there will be n number of solid fill layers. I know this can be sort of confusing without a diagram so I included a quick, simplistic one below illustrating this point. Let me know if you have any other questions about this!

is there a way to tune the width of the solid layers?

Alex's diagram is a touch confusing. Perhaps it ought to be like this:

is there a way to tune the width of the solid layers?

If you mean like this: or this: then the answer is No.

Perhaps ther should be the capability of doing so....I can see it would alter the strength, etc.

you know, i wondered about that for a second too... if this is such a "thin" roof, even though there is plenty of infill, it would probably be weaker. or, it might de-laminate?

what i'm printing now is working out fantastically. my settings are dialed in and i'm printing like a madman. many small buildings, some with flat roofs and some with slightly pitched roofs.

i'll have to check to be sure, but i think the width of the top-surface is dependant on the pitch of the roof. for example, the one pictured here is a very low pitch or rise/run. the overall width of that roof / building is 4". i printed some smaller houses with a steeper pitch and i believe that top surface was smaller. now this little house with 3/4" wide. so maybe it is a fixed percentage that scales proportionally - my guess at this point. and then if that's true, i'd hate to have to manually set that for every object!

in another model i slicked and printed since the original post, i noticed that the top surface, the green, was a lot more visible so that's a good thing as we don't want to see down into the building ha.