Import the Model and Reduce Polygons
Apply and modify the Pattern
What’s a Voronoi Pattern?
You hear people talking about interconnected triangles, about mesh models, about NURBS models, and making the model “watertight” before trying to print it. Every hobby or path in life takes time to learn the basics and intricacies. Then you see someone do something really creative with a 3D model by turning it into a Voronoi Pattern. Huh? We found this little squirrel on Thingiverse and it reminded us of the dog in Up!, the animated movie, so we downloaded it to print. As you can see, it has an unusual design – those swiss cheese holes are known as the Voronoi Patterns. The image shown is from the Cura slicer program, but the original Squirrel Voronoi-Style is on Thingiverse, by Roman Hegglin, so you can download it yourself. Roman is a very active designer and has a lot of terrific 3D models that he shares with others. We enjoy his work. After 3D printing the squirrel, on the very trusty LulzBot Mini (media loaner unit), we decided to go looking for more about these designs. Like many 3D print enthusiasts, we simply downloaded a model from Thingiverse without really thinking about how to do it ourselves. Naturally, we ran into our buddy, Marshall Peck, from ProtoBuilds, who readers will remember is the guy who shared how building your first 3D printer is easier than ever. Marshall explains a ton in his blog and also on Instructables, complete with screenshots, so you will want to head there to check it out: How to Make Voronoi Patterns with Autodesk® Meshmixer. These patterns can provide consistent horizontal cross-sections for slices that might be helpful when using SLA / resin 3D printers. Voronoi models can print well on most Fused Filament 3D printers. As mentioned, we tried it on the LulzBot Mini. Our first go, through no fault of the printer, left us with a half-headed squirrel. On the second go, we let Cura build support for us, which was a good and a bad thing. It uses a ton of material and then you have to break it, cut it, melt it all off of your final 3D print.
