Hello, I am picking up the design on a .stl file for a honey dripper. We need to thicken the interior walls for the piece to meet material standards. What is the best way to add thickness to the interior of a honeycomb lattice?
Although I see that someone else is also replying I can’t help share this #AskZBrush video anyway because I get the impression that this technique might be able to help you out as well:
Hope this can give you some ideas.
(@Spyndel: feel free to zap my message if you also covered this, I don’t want to create confusion).
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Hello @Locis,
There is no best way without knowing more about your mesh. Some approaches will work better for certain situations. Many approaches will require you to retopologize the mesh and reproject the detail in order to either reduce the polycount, remove the existing interior surface, or solidify the mesh to work with the Dynamesh “Shell” function.
Here are some general approaches you might consider:
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Dynamesh “Shell” function. If you have a solid mesh in Dynamesh mode, you can insert a Dynamesh subtractive mesh into it , and specify the desired thickness to create a hollow object with interior walls and a hole where the subtractive object was. This is ideal for creating a mesh with an opening for resin to drain out of.
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IF your mesh is reasonably low poly, and IF your interior surface is a separate polygroup, it is a simple matter to use ZModeler to move the interior surface further inward. Those are some big IFs though, and it may require a bit of work to get to that point. ZModeler needs a mesh to be of a low-ish polycount to work well.
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A Subtool > Extract operation set to a negative thickness value and with “Double” disabled, will create a new subtool that extrudes inward by the specified value. This will work well for meshes of a more uniform thickness, but for meshes with thin portions, you will probably have to directly edit the interior facing surface to eliminate those areas. Otherwise the geometry in those sections will overlap in a problematic fashion. One nice thing about this approach is that it creates two nice distinct polygroups for the interior and exterior surfaces, making them much easier to work with.
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If your mesh is low poly and 2d, you can also extrude inward with ZModeler. Many of the same issues with the negative extract will apply here as well.
In most situations, you will need to be familiar both with ZRemesher, and the various methods for re-projecting detail.
Good luck! 