Create a 3 dimensional wire mesh

antonio_freixas

I'm trying to create a model of a patio chair for printing on a resin 3D  printer at 1:12 scale.

Here is the reference photo for the chair:

I've modeled most of the chair and I managed to use the Fill and Thicken functions to create the area that needs the mesh.

There may be multiple ways of accomplishing my goals and I'm open to anything that might work. I should note that I am mostly a beginner with OnShape and learning as I go. There could be a spiffy feature available that makes this task very easy. Or it might be impossible to do and I could be wasting my time. Obviously, if this shape were flat, I could use a Linear Pattern along with some Boolean operation to approximate the look. I realize that's not how these wire meshes are manufactured, but then, most chairs aren't 3D printed and if they were, they would probably look different.

MichaelPascoe

Try using the custom feature Surface pattern by @maximilian_schommer , it will be perfect for this. You may have to pattern twice in order to get the staggered grid look.

https://cad.onshape.com/documents/a64ac0e2a3535b258d00659e/w/776763eac57c1b1bc1e410ab/e/355e01568ec03a68d2fecd79

How to search for custom features and add them to your toolbar:

antonio_freixas

Thanks, Michael. It didn't work, but I think my geometry had some problems. But I found the Curve Pattern tool which sort of does the same thing, but along one curve at a time. Using two curves and doing some fiddling, I was able to create this:

While it's cute, it's not really what I want. I made have to add a screen mesh manually to the 3D printed part. Thanks for the pointer to the extra features, though!

shawn_crocker

@antonio_freixas
I think your troubles are coming from your model being created with fill features. The fill feature is adding more complexity to the surface then I think you actually want. This surface complexity is also causing the custom features to fail. By the look of the shape, you should be able to just use a solid extrude

antonio_freixas

shawn_crocker said:

@antonio_freixas
I think your troubles are coming from your model being created with fill features. The fill feature is adding more complexity to the surface then I think you actually want. This surface complexity is also causing the custom features to fail. By the look of the shape, you should be able to just use a solid extrude

Thanks, Shawn.

The project for which I asked this question has been completed. I was going to model a chair in 1:12 scale using a 3D resin printer. I decided that I could not model this particular chair mesh at 1:12 scale in a way that was printable and wouldn't shatter with the least amount of pressure. I printed out the chair border and glued on wire mesh to make the seat and back surface.