STL is coming from a manufacturer provided .step file (converted with FreeCAD, and tidied up in meshlab). I've got about 9 different parts to integrate, and each takes about 3 mins to run through minkowski. The intermediate scading is just a way of caching the results so the final part can be modifi...

Yes, the minkowski operation works on imported stls. It is, however painfully slow (even when using a cube rather than a sphere), so I'm pre-generating 'toleranced' stls with a stub .scad file and then using those in the final layout to speed it up somewhat. tolerance.scad: minkowski(){ import(filen...

Oops! It works after all (damn typos). Many thanks!

Thanks! Sounds like just the trick, but unfortunately doesn't work on imported stls. Will have to head along to the scad forum, but am also interested in ways to alter the STL pre-import. If the worst comes to the worst I can write a script to read the STL and push all the vertices out along their r...

I'm trying to produce a part with depressions which will be a good fit for inserted components. I have an stl of the components that needs to fit. So far I've been using the difference operation in scad to make a component sized hole. The issue with this is that this hole will be nominally exactly t...

It might also be worth checking the z offset. I've managed to strip filament like that by having the bed too close to the nozzle for the first layer. When the filament doesn't have anywhere to go, something has to give.

Actually, ImageJ will do everything you want ... - download Fiji (a batteries included version of ImageJ) - open your data (use file->import->bio-formats if you have a compressed dicom image or something else which isn't handled natively) -select plugins->3d viewer - from within 3d viewer, select ed...

In addition to the already mentioned ImageJ (which is useful for format conversion and filtering, but cannot, as far as I am aware, export isosurfaces in a usable format), I'd take a look at OpenDX and meshlab. OpenDX will let you create isosurfaces AND export them in some form of standard format (I...

A test print to see whether I can make usable optomechanics - looking very promising thus far ...