mesh cleaning tools

[Bill Schwanitz]

At the meetup last night Ethan and I were talking about fixing up some stl files he had which were far more complicated than necessary and resulted in issues with slicing/printing.

Thought I would pass this article on. Its a good read and seems to help.

http://www.shapeways.com/tutorials/polygon_reduction_with_meshlab

Some parts, especially if exported from certain commercial tools *caugh* Solidworks *caugh* produce ridiculously large stl files for no good reason. Some slicers will run in to issues - I've had Slic3r crash due to overly complex meshes more than a few times.

Enjoy,

bill