[SomeWhatLost]

I have run into a bit of a snag...
my part is 6" long, but the work area of my 3D printer is only 4.72" long...
I suppose I could just fire up the mill and mill it, but I would prefer to just print it...
so my question, how can I take a part, and break it into 2 pieces? (and maybe add some sort of re-assembly aid, like pins/joint/something, ie be able to edit he 2 halves)

[awerby]

It sounds like you're only lacking about an inch and a quarter. Is it possible to position the part diagonally in the printer's work area so that it fits? Remember you've got 3 dimensions to work in, so it can go corner-to-corner, and tilt in the vertical axis as well. Unlike a mill, a printer really doesn't care if the part's in there squarely. That seems better than breaking your part into pieces and having to reassemble it, although that's possible, of course.

[MichaelHenry]

So far as I know, Alibre (now GeoMagic) doesn't have any facility for breaking up a part into pieces with assembly pins or tabs for applications like yours. Maybe in the future, as the parent company (3DS) seems to be focused on adding 3D printing features (see the very recent update).

You can, of course, create the pieces individually, either from scratch or from your original, whole part. For the latter, slice off a piece of the original with extrude cut that will fit the printer bed and save that as a separate part. Reload the original part and slice off the mating part, again with extrude cut, and save that as another separate . If the cut planes are sufficiently large for the part, you can glue them together as is. If not add some pins or tabs in one part and cut mating holes or slots in the other part.

You could also explore Boolean cut operations if your version of Alibre supports that feature.

Mike

[zool]

diagonal distance is the hypotenuse of a right triangle, so hypotenuse length = square root of sum of length of each adjacent side squared

process description:

1. Square length of each adjacent side
2. Add resulting products
3. Calculate square root of sum
4. Resulting square root is length of hypotenuse

Can't figure out how to write formula in reply, hence verbal description!

[SomeWhatLost]

A^2+B^2=C^2
I got the Pythagorean theorem, still not sure how to break one part into 2 in alibre...

[MichaelHenry]

To cut the part into 2 pieces, start from part view, select the top face, create a sketch, draw a closed box or shape around the piece you want to remove, and do an extrude cut "through all" and save this as "Part A". Reload your original part, repeat the above, but draw your box or shape around the other half of the part before doing the extrude cut. Save this as Part B.

If you upload your part, one of us can probably create the pieces for you as an example. You should also visit the GM forum here:

Geomagic ? Index page

There are lots of long-time users there and several are into 3D printing.

Mike