3D print preparation workflow - cutting in FreeCAD
Hey there,
I saw recently question but cannot find it now , so sharing here anyway, maybe it will help someone.
If you created an object in PartDesign WB, and you need it to cut it in two pieces for printing, one way to go is "do the cutting part in your slicer" ( BambuLab studio, or whatever), just before 3D printing. But if you later change your thing in FreeCAD, you have to repeat all the slicing in slicer again. I order to avoid repeating this manual process, I have done this slicing in FreeCAD, in the following way.
So, lets call "OriginalBody" the PartDesign body we need to print.
I want to have 2 parts at the end, e.g. "upper" and "lower" part, that together form "OriginalBody"
First, I create 2 clones (2 new bodies, based on original body - lets call them Part1 and Part2).
Next, I create a new PD Body "Slicer" - it usually consist of one big "Box" object. This Box will be used for boolean operations. Transform this body, positioning it in such a way that it cuts our original body - one body we will get based on intersection between Slicer and Original, and another as cutting off the part of Original that is inside our Slicer.
Next step , lets create two clones of Slicer, getting "Slicer1" and "Slicer2" bodies.
Now, activate Part1 body, do "Boolean" operation, add "Slicer1" body, and chose "common" - you got first body for printing!
Last step, activate Part2 body, to the "Boolean" operation, add "Slicer2" body, and chose "cut" operation - you got printing part 2.
Both together (part1 and part2) should form OriginalBody.
And the beauty of this approach is that if you change OriginalBody (so, you can keep working on it), Part1 and Part2 are parametric - so all the changes will be applied there also !
Hope this will help somebody!