Simplify3D User Forum

I've been having problems attempting this. Does anyone have any tips, suggestions, techniques? I've messed around with the settings but I just can't seem to get anything at all to come out.

While I started out using some of these images: http://geektyrant.com/news/2013/4/12/na ... k-art.html (my brother suggested trying to make some coasters), I've tried a number of images and I'm just not getting anything to come out. I can't even see a model show up despite trying to scale it up even 5000x times.

So I'm guessing I'm doing something wrong!

If by 3D you mean taking that image and taking parts and making them offset from a base...

my personal way of doing it is using Inkscape.

Open the image
Path -> Trace Bitmap
Mode -> Multiple Scans -> Colors
Also set the "Scans" number to how ever many colors are on it.
Hit OK

Now you have 2 images. One is your original, the other is a vector image. Delete the original.

Now the colors should separate. Delete the ones you do not want and save the ones you do ( each separately is my preference) as SVG files.

You can import these into your preferred 3d cad software ( most can import and extrude them). I personally use Tinkercad. The W and the H import as 1 mm/pixel. Then you can add a base or what ever you need.

The software already has an image-to-3D conversion utility so you are welcome to use that. I tried converting the first image from your post using the default settings and it worked on the first try. You just click Browse, select the .jpg or .png file you want to convert, and then you can leave the rest of the settings as the defaults.

See screenshots

And that's part of the reason I got this program! (And the point of the post) Yet it's not working...

I use those exact settings, hit create, hit yes I want to import model, then it says the part is small - scale to mm?

And then I see nothing. I even try scaling up the stl up hundreds of times and nothing. Bottom left says successfully parsed model with 0 triangles. Opening the stl file in notepad only gives:

solid Bat-t-shirt design.stl
endsolid Bat-t-shirt design.stl

instead of the stl file gibberish you normally get in the middle.

I'm accessing this from the Add-Ins drop down and don't see what I can be doing wrong - it seems pretty straightforward, yet its not working at all on my Win 7 higher powered machine... Anything I can do to be more specific to help you guys help me troubleshoot this?

Hi all,
I gave it a shot but same as Aha got, cant find the part on build table.
I run also Win 7 on high end CAD machine.

It wasn't the first time I tried but never worked for me.

Cheers
Michael

One idea - Can you guys give this a try using other image formats? PNG or BMP? Maybe even try a different image just so we can narrow in on the exact area where the problem is occurring.

Hi Clayton,
The trouble is with JPG and JPEG I tried different pic's and even converted the same in different formats Bmp and png works fine.
But keep working on it.
Thanks for the hint.

Michael

Thanks for the info!

I took the pictures, converted them to png in gimp and did nothing else - viola! It worked finally!

Here's a feature suggestion though - altering the shape, eg to make it circular for coasters. (Although that's not needed now, I just realized I can pretty easily crop the circle around a picture for my uses for that).

But the important thing is that this finally works, and is awesome. Thanks again.

pretty amazing.
Works well with png.

But how do you crop into a circle. Done that with the picture but it still generates the full square.

Is there a way to select just part of a model to print from within s3d ?

I could print a square, cut to size and sand the edges. But would be simpler to just select a circular section of the model for printing.

Could try exporting to STL. Import into something like Sketchup, trim to a circle, then re-export as STL for slicing in S3D.