Fusion to Blender EP3: Blender Lattice Creation

[@charli384]

Esto es lo que estaba buscando por todo el internet, gracias por la explicación.

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

It was a video version of what Roman came up with here www.romanreiner.com/3d-lattice-structure-design-for-additive-manufacturing/ I spoke to him before recording so all credit for the workflow goes to him.

[@Tarex_]

Oh this is the channel ive been looking for, instant subscribe, I'm using blender for exactly the mesh deform after i used fusion for measurements, but struggling a bit still and don't want to start over with the designs

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Tarek, what part specifically are you struggling with?

[@Tarex_]

@@LearnEverythingAboutDesign for example exporting from fusion to blender, since only meshes can be used, most tutorials talk about loopcuts but that only works with designs made in blender and remeshing breaks everything, for example i have a design that i need to bend with lattices, it has a text and the mesh is a complete mess, plus all the hotkeys and options are still a jungle full of pitfalls

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

@@Tarex_ Tarek, sorry I missed this comment. To get the designs out of Fusion into Blender you don't have many options. STL or OBJ. The STL route lets you see the triangle mesh on the screen. So in Fusion if you select the body in the browser you can right-click and "3D Print", you can also use the file menu and chose Export to get an OBJ out. Fusion has a preview functionality you can turn on in your user preferences for a mesh workspace and you can convert a body (BREP) to mesh in fusion and play around to get the mesh exactly how you want. Shortcuts in Blender are a must and take a lot of time to sort out. I know Andrew Price (Blender Guru) has a shortcut key list when you join his mailing list. That is probably the biggest hurdle when watching tutorials. I have been working on blender more the past few weeks and plan to have some more blender content soon, but I have been focusing on other things lately.

[@Tarex_]

@@LearnEverythingAboutDesign No worries, Damian Mathew just made a Video about going from .step to Obj using Moi 3d as a quad converter, and blender has a .step importer but isn't that hot. The shortcuts probably come after a while with the Cheat sheet just by brute force, still overwhelming for the start I'm also on other stuff right now and will continue with Blender when I'm done. But thanks for the response for sure ;)

[@omegadeepblue1407]

I love this series.

[@chipko]

Great tutorial. From Blender 2.8 onwards you may need to enable cell fracture... Edit > preferences > add ons > cell fracture

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Thanks for the info!

[@melihcanisikli]

Fantastic!!! thnx...

[@bryanwilkinson3433]

Just subscribed to the channel! Love what you are doing. I've been struggling with the Roman tutorial for a bit and finally came across your video. Quick confirmation - the cell fracture is relying on the particle system we generate? So a more resolved and smaller size particle system should result in a tighter, denser lattice structure that is generated after the cell fracture occurs. Just for my own understanding! Thanks again! Excited to watch the next episode.

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Thanks Bryan! Yeah I spoke with Roman before recording that video, its a cool technique! And yes to the best of my understanding the cell fracture is going between the vertices of the particle system. If you manually slice up a mesh then theoretically you have complete control over that lattice system. You can also do the cell fracture without the particle system, but i think that was a way to make it more random/organic. When you do the cell fracture if you happen to manually modify a mesh, or bring one in from another system, you can use the "Own Verts" option rather than particles. One thing I haven't tried is the "Annotation Pencil" method. Maybe I will come back to this in a future video! I cover more CAD on this channel than Blender, but I do have a series for blender for all the things i struggled(struggle) with :)

[@mattiazagon3739]

Great topic 👍🏾

[@praaneshs2066]

You can do much more with Rhino+Grasshopper. Or you can try Additive Manufacturing Softwares like Autodesk Netfabb. Netfabb comes with a wide variety of lattices. Pls do more tutorials on lattices! Cheers!

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Praanesh, you are correct with those comments. Rhino+Grasshopper is a great option. The intent here isn't to show the best option but how to work between Fusion and Blender. Note that Netfabb is very expensive and at a hobby level isn't a realistic option. Netfabb Premium will generate Lattice at about $4500/year, which isn't horrible, but Ultimate is needed for lattice optimization at around $14000/year. That is well outside the cost for the large majority of users. There are loads of very robust options out there for lattice generation for manufacturing for a wide range or prices. Blender is certainly not a package suited for Manufacturing but it is amazing in its own right.

[@praaneshs2066]

@@LearnEverythingAboutDesign I agree, but I need someone to make a proper tutorial on making lattices with rhino + GH like you! Pls make one in the future!

[@omegadeepblue1407]

@@praaneshs2066 if you need him to do the tutorial then buy him a license.

[@bobdole27]

Very cool, would these structures be 3D printable

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Bob, that depends on what printer you have. Something like a Form2 would have a much better time than a desktop FFF style machine.

[@bobdole27]

@@LearnEverythingAboutDesign That is very true, I should look into getting a SLA printer someday. I have been able to print some of these structures if keep the amount of fractured parts to about 25, sometimes higher if bigger. Another thing im trying to tackle is having the "shell" of the object connect with the lattice, so as to have the lattice as a sort of custom infill, but i haven't been able to make it manifold.

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

@@bobdole27 Very cool that you are applying this Bob! There are certainly better options out there for lattice designed for 3D printing but they all cost a good bit of money. Sculpteo, Carbon is working on one, Autodesk has one and so on. I am working on another mesh video to add to this series that hopefully will be helpfu.

[@omegadeepblue1407]

Depends on the thickness and density of your lattice structure, in my case i use a Mingda Magician X2 and prints latttices structures created with Grasshopper and nTopology.

[@vikashkumar-cr7ee]

The lattice you created is unstructured. Could you please create the homogenous porous lattice.

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Hi Vikash, this process isn't ideal for homogeneous lattice. The cell fracture, even with the randomness value to 0, is still not going to give you what you want. You will have to play around with getting your mesh vertices like you want and then fracturing based on the vertices rather than a particle system. I will play around a bit more and if I come up with a good solution I will make a video, but there are a few pieces of software out there specifically designed to build those lattice structures for production and blender doesn't really fit into that group.

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Vikash, I added an EP4 video of how to make a more structured lattice.

[@omegadeepblue1407]

welcome to the stochastic Blender world, fierro!

[@张慧乐]

Can Blender exchange data with other 3D software (Catia)or finite element software?

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

STL and OBJ are the two standards. The data in Blender is MESH, while things like Catia/Solidworks, NX, Inventor, Fusion etc are all mainly dealing with BREP (Solid bodies). The math is just different. You can export other file types from Blender but as far as i know there aren't any BREP style files like STEP, IGES or XT(parasolid)

[@natashavargas9044]

my question i have been doing some of this tutorials and is no way to bring them in SL so do not know what i am doing wrong ;o(

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Natasha, I don't know how i missed this comment. Sorry for that! What do you mean SL? Can you elaborate?

[@TeunSegers]

This is not the video you're looking for if you just want to make a clean render of your Fusion360 models. After 2 videos I have no clue as to what the objective is with this box...

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Sorry this wasn't what you are looking for. The intent of this mini series was to show a workflow to go from Fusion to blender and create a lattice type structure(something that isn't in Fusion yet). Are you trying to render your Fusion models in Blender? Or in Fusion?