Not the most showy topic/video but one that is really important to understand if you want to 3D print from Blender without getting annoyed. Hope you find it helpful!
Пікірлер: 119
@sathivv95018 күн бұрын
I couldn't figure out why the top layer of my models in the slicer would have weird artifacts. I then noticed they went away if I scaled my blender model up by 1000. Now I know why that worked. If only I had seen this video a week ago. Thank you very much for covering this at least after all that pain I have a rational explanation now.
@ArtisansofVaul18 күн бұрын
Glad to have been able to give an explanation to the solution you found 😁👍
@patwood77457 күн бұрын
WOW!!!!! I wish I had discovered this video two years ago! Better late than never. I work in mm and use the Boolean tool a lot, cutting out tiny little things. I tried the technique of choosing mm and changing the scale. My booleans are not happy campers with that approach. This video is the best I have come across in explaining how Blender dimensions work. Thanks for making it easy to understand and for making me laugh. My country is still working in Imperial Measurements, and it drive me crazy, so like a lot of folks here, I have just started working with metric. For goodness sake try adding 1/16 + 3/64+ 5/8 or even worse having to convert to the decimal versions and adding 0.0625 ..... It is nuts
@ArtisansofVaul7 күн бұрын
@patwood7745 Haha, I can imagine! Really glad the video recommendation is what you were after 😁 Hope this will be useful for the next two years now 😉
@SkonkBot2 жыл бұрын
One of the first things I changed in my defaults was units to mm, scale to 0.001 and grid to 0.001 - had no issues with blender, various slicers and other design software.
@ArtisansofVaul2 жыл бұрын
That's cool. I do talk about the scale changes at the end so people can do the same as well. The video is more about understanding the issue.
@MartinJamesLittle2 жыл бұрын
Agreed, I followed a tutorial (I think one by Maker Tales, he has a few now.) on how to set the view and scaling to mm for precision modelling and never had any issues with clipping or weird rounding during booleans and certainly never had to mess with scale during or after exporting. Oh, I have one tip for people setting up their default view: I added 2 wireframe boxes in a separate collection. Each one is the build volume of my printer; one for my Mars, one for my Neptune. I then set them to hidden and save my default view file. It means I can very quickly check that models will fit in the build area and give a IRL scale reference. It does make it doubly important to tick the "Selection only" when exporting though or you just get a big block. Adding another mesh for scale comparison for a 28mm mini might be handy too, there have been times when I've spent a long time adding detail for it to be too small to even print, let alone be noticeable once printed.
@SkonkBot2 жыл бұрын
@@ArtisansofVaul I'll also just take a moment to thank you all these videos though :) I started trying to pickup blender a couple of weeks back and so many tutorials have them using tools without saying how they activated it, using addons without saying what the addon is, using menus that appear different due to addons etc... Your videos are not only the exact subject I want to use Blender for, but you also never use a tool without naming it and saying how to activate it, never use an addon without saying what it is and where to get it etc.. I actually feel pretty confident in Blender now and it's entirely due to the videos you made. So... many thanks :)
@ArtisansofVaul2 жыл бұрын
@@SkonkBot Thanks so much dude. That's really nice of you to say.
@ArtisansofVaul2 жыл бұрын
@@MartinJamesLittle I'm hoping to do a little something that you might find interesting about this suggestion. I had the idea watching a video on something else and thought it might be applicable for 3D printing design. I just need to check if it works.
@jeffellis11492 ай бұрын
*Converted to Blender units!* Thankyou so much! I only work in mm and it's now perfect. I'd messed around with changing scale and units to 0.001 etc. but some addons only work in meters when set to mm. Even bolt factory and punchit works properly now! Brilliant! Orca slicer gave a slightly annoying "do you want to convert to mm on every import" and even that's gone. Love the "I'm not a savage" comment! I worked for two American companies before I retired - the last one made things in the US and bought components in causing me to I travel Europe with two lots of tools and some were tiny allen keys I had use fully suited, masked and gloved... grrr... Bloody excellent. Cheers!
@ArtisansofVaul2 ай бұрын
😂😂😂Thanks Jeff. Glad it's solved a lot of issues. I found exactly the same, which is why I felt is was a good topic to cover. 😁👍🏻
@LondonTessaAngelit3 ай бұрын
This is very helpful to know. I have worked in Blender for years and never knew why this happened. Thanks to this video I can understand how to not have the itty bitty problem when importing to slicers. Awesome and thanks :)
@ArtisansofVaul3 ай бұрын
My pleasure Tessa, great to have been able to help 😁
@HaniTiby2 жыл бұрын
Blender units was a mystery to me, now everything is clear thanks to you
@ArtisansofVaul2 жыл бұрын
No worries at all. It took some trial and error to work out for sure including some test printing to be certain. But I thought it was useful knowledge to pass on.
@RobertTolone2 жыл бұрын
Very helpful video. I’ve been puzzling over this units issue for a while now. This explained it neat and sweet. Thanks!
@ArtisansofVaul2 жыл бұрын
Glad people see finding this helpful and saving them time 👍🏻
@Enfillyon9 ай бұрын
I was trying to figure out scale relative to units in blender and this is exactly what I was looking for. Thank you!
@ArtisansofVaul9 ай бұрын
My pleasure 😁 It does seem a bit odd when it starts relating them to other programs.
@Thiccron Жыл бұрын
Don’t know how it took me so long to get to this video. Thanks vaul this is incredibly helpful
@ArtisansofVaul Жыл бұрын
👍🏻 Cheers man. Happy it's helping out with some good info 😁
@Thiccron Жыл бұрын
@@ArtisansofVaul haha i tried using mm a few times but always had issues. Using M for mm is a great fix. Thanks again!
@darrennew8211 Жыл бұрын
I've never had any problem working in mm. It's floating point numbers, so scaling by 1000 doesn't affect the precision even though blender tends to truncate the lower digits on display. I've also not had to worry about the scale, because STL files don't have units anyway, so every program I use assumes they're mm. Maybe your one slicer is confused and you think that's why importing things is a problem. And of course if you're doing something like a cloth simulation to create a minifig's clothing, you need it in the right scale for the simulation too (where "right scale" would be making the minifig several meters tall). I probably haven't done as much as you, but I never noticed blender crashing or anything like that, and I just set my far clip-plane to maybe 100 meters instead of many kilometers away when I'm working in millimeters. I'm loving binging this channel. So much good info here.
@ArtisansofVaul Жыл бұрын
I'm glad to hear you don't have any issues with it and Blender has apparently done things recently to help with it. So the issue with the scale definetly happens in 3D builder and its such a helpful tool to give a mesh a final check I pretty much always throw everything into it first. It can be overcome in a variety of ways but this just tends to be easiest/more reliable. But if you don't experience it as an issue then no need to change anything😉👍🏻
@darrennew8211 Жыл бұрын
@@ArtisansofVaul I will keep that in mind. I find that PrusaSlicer can send the model to autodesk to fix it without having to have yet another set to it, so I haven't needed it. But it's good to know it's there. Maybe it is newer versions of blender after all, too. Oh, I also tend to save my STLs as ASCII. I wonder if that makes a difference.
@ArtisansofVaul Жыл бұрын
@darrennew8211 That's interesting. Never tried saving them in a different format so that's a nice idea.
@AL-go2mv5 ай бұрын
You fixed several of my problems in one video. Thank you!
@ArtisansofVaul5 ай бұрын
My pleasure man. Glad I could help 😁
@DaveTimperleyАй бұрын
Brilliant! Thanks for this vid. I'm just starting out with Blender and 3d printing and the whole 'blender scale' thang was pissing me off. Especially when I add a new object to scene or fiddle around with grids.
@ArtisansofVaulАй бұрын
👍🏻 Glad I could help.
@chuckmower7 ай бұрын
Thank you so much. This was something I have been trying to get answers to and you gave the best answer.
@ArtisansofVaul7 ай бұрын
My pleasure chuck. I was something I had found quite annoying so having tested quite a bit I thought it would be good to share 😁👍🏻
@creativohugo8 ай бұрын
this worked like a charm, thank you so much! I made the mistake of turning the original file I was workin on into mm and was very puzzled when it looked microscopic in size on lychee
@ArtisansofVaul8 ай бұрын
My pleasure. Glad to be able to help with what can be a quite annoying problem.
@DerekGoveDesign Жыл бұрын
Really interesting video, thanks for making it. Most of my work is exported as an stl for a CNC machine, which-like 3D printers-deals with mm as the base unit. I've never had a problem with working in mm in Blender, but have had to remember to scale models up and down as appropriate when switching to and from 3DCoat or for final export. Setting Blender's units to 'none' might be a nice simple way to simplify that part of my workflow. 👍👍
@ArtisansofVaul Жыл бұрын
I'd be really interested to hear how that turns out for you. I don't have experience with CNC machines/software so it would be good to know if anyone else asks.
@DerekGoveDesign Жыл бұрын
@@ArtisansofVaul No worries, I'll let you know how it goes. Am working on a few on-going projects at the moment, but I'll give it a test on the next new one.
@DerekGoveDesign11 ай бұрын
@@ArtisansofVaul Just an update... I've now switched over to using 'none' as the scene units for all my projects which will be machined on a CNC machine. It has greatly simplified import and export of objects, as well as jumping between Blender and 3DCoat. Great tip. I'm glad I watched your video.
@ArtisansofVaul11 ай бұрын
@@DerekGoveDesign Thanks so much for coming back and letting us know how that went. Really glad its gone so well and is helping 😁
@medeixo93925 ай бұрын
Thank you so much , this helped me alot
@ArtisansofVaul5 ай бұрын
😁 Glad to be able to help out 👌🏼
@mattreagan4347 Жыл бұрын
Very helpful overview, thank you
@ArtisansofVaul Жыл бұрын
No problem 😁
@mattpollock48682 жыл бұрын
Haha loved the disclaimer at the start. 👍
@ArtisansofVaul2 жыл бұрын
🤣
@stormycatmink Жыл бұрын
I'd argue that scale and size is always important. Even when you're doing things like still image renders; the way lenses and rendering optics work in the raytracer especially are dependent on the scale and measurements. If you're modeling a miniature/model, then the proper scale is the actual scale you want it printed, of course. But if a spaceship is actually 2km long, make it 2km long if you intend to use it as a render model. You'll just get better results in so many places. Scale it later if you decide to print your 2km spaceship (but you'll probably need to re-model it anyway to fix detail scales). That being said, the Blender thinking meters and everything else thinking mm is annoying. Blender has a built in Unit Scale feature which I've toyed with, but I don't think I tested importing into Lychee. I'll see how that works on a model I'm working on. Edit: Okay, right off the bat, switching units to 'none' and Unit Scale to 1000, it is displaying my 10cm cylinder as 0.100, so that's promising.
@ArtisansofVaul Жыл бұрын
Thanks for coming back. Great points and I don't know enough about rendering to have commented so thanks so much for the insight. Cool to hear about your scale experiments and thanks for coming back with the results 😁👌
@stormycatmink Жыл бұрын
@@ArtisansofVaul Thanks! After some testing, the Blender unit scale feature just divides the units it shows you internally, so while you create a cube and it comes out by default as 2mm, and shows as 2mm, it's exported and treated with all the camera clipping issues just like if you set units to meters and typed in 0.002. Importing into Lychee still makes it 1000 times too small. I found you could export by a factor of 1000 in the STL export option to fix the import issues in slicers, but that doesn't solve the other issues with blender operating at such small units.
@blenderian.3d2 жыл бұрын
nice information. this is helpful for using Blender.
@ArtisansofVaul2 жыл бұрын
Thanks.
@johanneswetzel30232 жыл бұрын
Thanks for that video. Very important issue, wish you'd made that last year. 🤣
@ArtisansofVaul2 жыл бұрын
Haha. Trust me, I wish someone else had made it 2-3 years ago. It would have saved me a lot of time 🤣
@monkeybmcgee Жыл бұрын
Thank you so much. This was very helpful
@ArtisansofVaul Жыл бұрын
No problem Jay. Glad it helped 😁
@Foxomatic3 ай бұрын
This video explains why I'm experiencing a number of strange issues. Especially when it comes to the 3d Printing tool and errors. If I make anything very small, the tool spits out Zero Faces ans Non Manifold. But, the moment the object is scaled up, the errors evaporate. May test later to see if switching scale helps with this issue.
@ArtisansofVaul3 ай бұрын
Glad I could help 😁 To be honest I always ignore the zero faces as it just means they are really small almost all of the time.
@Foxomatic3 ай бұрын
@@ArtisansofVaul oh really, that's great to know. Thanks for the heads up! 😃
@freightuk7 ай бұрын
Thank you, I was getting suspicious about the dimensional errors occuring whilst working on small parts in mm, looks as though no units is the best option for me.
@ArtisansofVaul7 ай бұрын
My pleasure. I mean you can do it any way you want if you're willing to do the mental maths but I find this easier.
@JustAlfy2 жыл бұрын
Awesome video like always! Are you by any chance planning to follow this up with a video explaining your process to 3d print objects, choosing the settings you use (especially for supports) for the slicing?
@ArtisansofVaul2 жыл бұрын
I'd be happy to. I thought there were a lot of tutorials on that but I'd be happy to ifnits what people want.
@Mr_Teo Жыл бұрын
Great video my friend!!!
@ArtisansofVaul Жыл бұрын
Thanks so much 😁
@richardokeeffe83752 жыл бұрын
Very useful info dude!
@ArtisansofVaul2 жыл бұрын
Cheers and glad its useful!
@zaca21110 ай бұрын
That explains why Cura does an auto scale when I import STL files exported from Blender.
@ArtisansofVaul10 ай бұрын
👍🏻 Hopefully this has helped in that case
@designomomento3 ай бұрын
thanks for the video. I have some issues. When I import stl file into slicer software is seems like it is lowpoly object it doesnt matter how much subdivison I apply. I check wit 3d print addon seems everythin is ok. I dont know why
@ArtisansofVaul3 ай бұрын
Hmm.... I may need to see the file but when you export the STL have you got the "Apply Modifiers" box ticked?
@EPeltzer18 күн бұрын
When 90% of users need to go change the default unit settings, maybe they need to change the default settings? I'm very often when they update blender I have to go in and make sure these units are still set correctly. I have always felt that there should be no "blender units" at all it's just confusing and unnecessary. It should just be millimeters and the scale of that mm unit should be one. And that exporting at that setting should result in all slicers and 3D printing services reading the scale correctly. (Whereas currently with mm the scale must be 0.001) And of course you can change it to anything you want. IMHO.
@ArtisansofVaul18 күн бұрын
@EPeltzer I think the issue is that while 90% change the units they are not changing them to the same thing 😅 So it makes changing the default a change that maybe helps 10% of people only to annoy the 10% of people that weren't changing it 😆 Also as shown here the Blender units are very adaptable so I'd be very disappointed if they went away
@ft73972 жыл бұрын
I gave that up long ago. So when modeling for print i just model it as it is then scale 10x in slicer
@ArtisansofVaul2 жыл бұрын
Yeah I did that too. I'm definitely going to be sticking to the Blender Units method for a while to see how it works out.
@ukaszborowik932 Жыл бұрын
Wonderful, thank You
@ArtisansofVaul Жыл бұрын
No problem. Cheers for taking the time to watch and comment.
@gustavo1995gugu Жыл бұрын
Great video! How could I take a 3D model and print it on papel so that the scale on paper matches those on blender? I mean, I want to creat an object and then creat a blueprint of it.
@ArtisansofVaul Жыл бұрын
Hmm.... That's tough, I'm not sure if there might be a way of doing that in the render settings to control the size of the image created. Personally I'd bodge it and bring the image into a program where I can draw something that's exactly (for example) 10mm and then match the image to that. You can do that even in Microsoft Word. But it isn't exactly perfectly precise.
@Impossible_Emporium2 жыл бұрын
Another problem with Blender doing things in the mm scale is that it tends to make physics simulations explode.
@ArtisansofVaul2 жыл бұрын
I had totally forgotten to mention that. Really good point, thanks for mentioning it 👍🏻
@ryanb65032 жыл бұрын
when i was working in mm scale to design something I was getting this issue where blender would merge vertices, especially in circles and when scaling and beveling.
@ArtisansofVaul2 жыл бұрын
Yeah. This can be avoided by playing around with lots of settings bit hopefully this helps explain the issue.
@lajoyalobos20092 ай бұрын
1:07 😂 I'm a "savage" (American) and even I don't use Imperial when it comes to 3D printing. Just like "English is the language of aviation" so too is metric the standard measure of 3D printing.
@ArtisansofVaul2 ай бұрын
@@lajoyalobos2009 😅👍🏻 Agreed.
@TheLuminak Жыл бұрын
Very good video ! i have one question ! if i set it up to metric or none ..when i add a cube ..it still show 0.002 m in the item dimension ! how do i fix that ? Thanks you !!
@ArtisansofVaul Жыл бұрын
Hmm.... that's very odd. Thag shouldn't be the case if you have none. For example mine shows up as "2".
@TheLuminak Жыл бұрын
@@ArtisansofVaul woow that a quick reply ! awesome ..! thank you sir ! well at least i can always do like you show at the end of the video ..exporting stl file and transforme scale , it work very well to. haha !
@ArtisansofVaul Жыл бұрын
@LUMINAK No problem at all. I'm just frustrated I can't offer more help. Maybe save the file and then come back into it to see if that works (though you shouldn't have to do that). Hopefully you find a way to sort it.
@TheLuminak Жыл бұрын
@@ArtisansofVaul I understand , no worries mate ! :) very appreciated ,keep up the good work ! subscribed ! you got a lot of very useful tutorial for blender ! mostly for hard surface modeling . I am very good at organic sculpting ! also new to sculpting but, i got lot of potential . hmm i would like to share a picture ...you wont be disappointed . haha !
@ArtisansofVaul Жыл бұрын
@@TheLuminak Please do! Sculpting is something I need to work on. It's probably easiest to find me on something like Instagram for sharing pictures.
@sector13studios6 ай бұрын
Am I missing something? I design in mm workspace, export to Cura and never have a problem. Scale is always perfect.
@ArtisansofVaul6 ай бұрын
Probably not. Some programs will handle it ok, others won't. So it depends what you're using.
@sector13studios6 ай бұрын
I'm using Blender, I had to think about it for a minute, my work space set to open at mm at .001 I think that is the answer to my question.
@IggyTheLighskinWonder11 ай бұрын
I’m still so confused, I keep trying all this and my figure is still small and hasn’t increased in size
@ArtisansofVaul11 ай бұрын
Is that because you have changed an existing file instead of starting from scratch? If it is, you could try making a new file set to no scale, then copy and past the object you want into this new file. I cant say I have ever had this issue but I did make my change over at the start of the file/design.
@IggyTheLighskinWonder11 ай бұрын
Yeah it’s a stl file I bought from esty and I’m tryna plug the file in and cut half of the of the print so it can print on my 3d printer properly
@IggyTheLighskinWonder11 ай бұрын
@@ArtisansofVaul I’ll add the helmet and it says it’s there but nothing will show on my end
@ArtisansofVaul11 ай бұрын
@@IggyTheLighskinWonder is it in the object outliner?
@IggyTheLighskinWonder11 ай бұрын
@@ArtisansofVaul is that a certain setting?
@KingUsyk8 ай бұрын
Blender units are not specifically tied to any real world unit. They can be whatever you want them to be. You're really overthinking this
@ArtisansofVaul8 ай бұрын
🤣 I think you might have missed the point of the video. You're completely right in that you can think of them however you want. But as a focus on 3D printing there is very specifically a way other computer software interprets the information Blender puts out in say an exported STL file. And that does give Blender units a real world unit. And if you're 3D printing that's very important as it saves you work/time/annoyance. Have you 3D printed from Blender created files?
@artberesta11 ай бұрын
Спасибо за видео
@ArtisansofVaul11 ай бұрын
Thankyou for watching 😁
@kevinm37512 жыл бұрын
I totally disagree, I have been designing and modeling in Blender for 3D printing for a few years and I have always setup my interface to work in millimeters. I have yet to have any of the issues you are claiming! I think your problem is NOT Blender it is the total shit slicer software you want to use! Try using a REAL slicer instead of this crap and NO it has very little in common with Chitubox, although I have absolutely no love for that slicer either but have and can use it and still do not experience the problems you are having with Anycubics hacked up crap slicer!
@BrailleScale2 жыл бұрын
You can disagree all you want but did you even watch the video? I use the free versions of both lychee and chitubox interchangeably and in terms of import scale, they are both perfectly fine taking my items that are designed in blender (in "meters" that I think of as millimeters) and they import them, again as as shown in the video, at 100% scale and they measure correctly in mm and print correctly in mm when checked with my digital calipers. Sorry you think the most widely used and easily accessible slicer programs are bad? Which one do you use, you failed to mention. It is also worth noting that if you really are hung up on what the made up unit number says in blender, a third way to make it work in most other normal slicers that everyone uses that take a "1 unit" and consider it a mm is by going into the Scene Properties tab, going into Unit System settings and then under where it shows Metric selected, you can also change the unit scale there as well to show 0.001 and then set that as your default start up as you would with any other preferred settings. But quite frankly as most slicer softwares I am aware of are seeing STL file numerical units and reading them as mm, there is going to be an issue if you do not use the same default numerical value Blender has called "meters" if you're not adjusting your Blender unit scale.
@ArtisansofVaul2 жыл бұрын
I'm glad you haven't had any of these issues but I (and others is seems from the comments and various forums) do. Do you also find your physics simulations working well as that's another issue I forgot to mention? I'm curious what slicer you use? As shown in the video I use Lychee but I'm always happy to hear about different programs to try. And yeah, the Anycubic slicer is horrible (though I haven't used it in years at this point to know if it's changed).