For example, if you type 's' and then '0.5' the object selected will scale to 50%. If you wish to do so precisely, you can just type the number after the 's'. You can do so by selecting the object in blender and hitting the 's' key (for scale). If, however, you wish to change the scale of your model. When you export the model from blender to an STL file, the blender units are again converted back to mm, and your model will have the correct scale when sent to the printer. You don't need to change the scale however. That is why when you import a STL into blender it appears HUGE. The default scene in blender starts with a cube that is 2 blender units large, or 2mm. So, 1 mm on the scan is translated to 1 blender unit in blender. Now one Blender unit will be equivalent to 0.001 meters or 1 mm. In other words, is it possible to create a scale model of the structure taken form the CT/DICOM file?'īlender uses a fictitious unit of measurement called a 'blender unit.' When you import an STL generated from a CT or MRI scan, the default unit of measurements is mm. In the Properties panel (far right of the interface), click the button for Scene Properties (see figure below) Scene properties (after clicking highlighted button) Click Metric, and enter 0.001 into the Scale text box. Is there a simple way to ensure a continuity of scale from CT scan to final print? I noticed that you mentioned how blender translates 1mm scale into different units. 'I just ran through your tutorial regarding slicer, blender, and mesh mixer. It will appear in the Tool shelf ( T key).I was recently asked a question about maintaining and changing scale of objects in blender, and I thought I would share the answer with you. It comes with any recent build of Blender and you can activate it through the Add-ons panel of the User preferences ( CTRL + ALT + U). Step 5 (optional) – Activate the 3D printing plug-inīlender has a nice plug-in for 3D printing called 3D Printing Toolbox. Now our interface looks more clean, good! If you use Blender for 3D printing, most of the time you will not need the camera and the lights, so you can get rid of them.Īt the same way, you will not need the Timeline editor so you can remove it and save some space (I replaced it the the Node editor because I use Sverchok). Step 4 (optional) – remove unnecessary elements Now you can have an idea of how you object will fit inside your printer. In this way it will not be shown during the renderings and it will not be possible for you to select it from the 3D View. Now we are ready to forget about it: in the Outliner, change the name from Cube to Working area (or the name you prefer) and click on the arrow and the camera icon.

Move the box so that it occupies the center of the scene. Now you will always see only the wire-frame of your box. Go to the Display panel of the Object settings and change the Maximum draw type from Textured to Wire.

Now we have a big cube in our scene, not really what we want. We will use the printing area of a ZMorph 2SX: 250 x 235 x 165 mm. Step 3 (optional) – Display the printing areaĬreate a new cube or set, through the Transform Properties Panel , the dimensions of the default one to the ones of your printer. The next steps are encouraged but totally optional. This is all you have to do to use Blender for 3D printing.

That’s it! Now you can press CTRL + U to save these settings as default. It’s also a good idea to increase the number of Lines, for example to 30. If memorization isn’t your thing, you can even print lists of these mouse actions and hotkeys and refer to them whenever you need to. Memorizing common mouse actions and numeric keypad hotkeys in Blender or common keyboard hotkeys in Blender’s 3D View help you work more efficiently in Blender. Personally I prefer the units of the grid to be cm, so I type 0.01. When it comes to Blender, you can save time in many ways. If you want that each square of the grid represents a mm, put the scale to 0.001. To fix this press N to display the Transform Properties Panel (if it’s not already there) and scroll down to the Display section. Change the units to Imperial or Metric. We will use millimeters, hence we choose Metric with a Scale of 0.001.īecause of the previous step, the default grid became so big that you cannot even see it. Go the Units panel, in the Scene settings. These are the steps:īlender by default uses Blender units, but if we want to have an exact idea of how big will be the model that we are going to print, we need to uses real-world units. Within the many, you can use it to create and prepare models for 3D printing and other digital manufacturing techniques, like CNC milling. Blender doesn’t come ready for 3D printing, but setting it up is quite straightforward, in this article we will see how.īlender is an amazing open source project, the amount of projects you can realize with it is astonishing.

Blender print to scale