Garden Railway Forum

Hi Philip,

Looked at your bike and you wasn't that impressed with the file, you Sid it was Dutch. I have seen this in Thingiverse but it is far too large for TinkerCad to accept. It is saying to mesh it and try again. What the heck is mesh, haven't got the faintest on that at all and can Flashprint or TinkerCad do it.

Anyway this is a photo of it.


And this is the file,

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3886096


I am sorry, I can't load the file direct to our forum. I have downloaded it, but I don't know what I need to do to put on here.

There is a mans bike also,

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3131722

Hi Rod,
It says it's 1:87 (HO scale), can you just scale it up 400% in your slicer?

Hi Boris,

This is what it says on TinkerCad,


So it won't load to be able to do anything with it.

Unless you want to edit it you don't need to put it through TinkerCad, just load the STL straight into your slicer (Cura maybe) and scale it up.

Roughly 400% but more precisely 457%.

FWLR wrote: Thu Jan 07, 2021 9:06 am I have seen this in Thingiverse but it is far too large for TinkerCad to accept. It is saying to mesh it and try again. What the heck is mesh, haven't got the faintest on that at all and can Flashprint or TinkerCad do it.

Rod,
ALL 3d print files are composed of thousands of tiny triangles that join together to form various apparently curved shapes. The triangles are so small that neither the printer nor the human eye can normally see them and they interpret them as a true curve.This is called a mesh.

The message you got tells you that the number of triangles is too big for the program to handle and suggests reducing the number of triangles. This is akin to changing the resolution on a standard document printer from say 600dpi to 60dpi - You get an approximation of the original file but with a lot less detail. I don't know for sure but I'd doubt that Flashprint can change the mesh size and you said yourself that Tinkercad can't import it to begin with. You probably need Meshmixer or a similar program. When you get Meshmixer to work please let me know, because it's beyond me!

These two pictures show the mesh effect: The first one is screenshot of the stl of a small figure (67mm high) in Flashprint. I then imported that stl into Sketchup, which took about an hour, and the second picture is a screenshot of the same figure in SU and shows the mesh. The blackish areas are where the triangles are so small and close together that the screen can't separate the lines.

Thank you Philip,

I understand a lot better now. I have however managed to get the bike onto Flashprint and I am waiting now for my printer to finish the job it is doing, (5 hours left) then I will try to print the bike.

I have also put it at 300% to start with Boris and see how that goes.

Have you got a file for the figure Philip and if not where did you find it please...

FWLR wrote: Thu Jan 07, 2021 11:01 am Have you got a file for the figure Philip and if not where did you find it please...

Rod, Sorry but that file was bought and has a copyright attached so I can't pass it on to you.