STEP BY STEP 4 WAYS TO PREPARE YOUR MODEL FOR 3D PRINTING
01 FLATTEN OFF THE BASE
In order to flatten off the base of your models, make sure you have perspective turned off (bottom of the screen). Now snap the model to the front view (same place).
To use the Trim tool, find it in the toolbar and activate it. Look on the opposite side of the interface and choose a method of trimming, either a line or a rectangle. Drag the chosen tool along the bottom of your model and it will trim the excess away.
02 DECIMATE THE MESH
Go to the panel next to Scene on the top bar. This gives you access to Multires, Voxel, Dyntopo and a final unnamed one which is Decimate. You can set a slider to the percentage you want to reduce by; for example, if your model is 1 million polygons, setting it to 50% will give you 500K. Experiment with this option to get the best result.
03 COMBINE THE MODEL WITH VOXEL REMESH
When you want to combine a few models together you can use Voxel remesh. In the Scene panel tick the models that you want to combine. A dialog box for Voxel re-meshing appears below. Set the number you want to achieve for your desired polygon count. If you don’t know then start low (100) and if it isn’t right then just undo and try higher. This comes with a warning! If you go too high you will crash the program. Be warned!
04 SPLIT THE MODEL INTO PARTS
You may have a printer that has a smaller bed size than your model. In this case, you may wish to split your model into parts. To do this, locate the Split tool in the toolbar and in the same way as we did for the Trim tool, pick a line or a rectangle to use as the Split guide. Pull the line across the mesh where you want to have separated parts.