STL not watertight

greet_van_geel

I exported my design as a STL,. but my slicer says that my model in not watertight.
How can I solve this in Onshape?

Axel_Kollmenter

Can you share the document with us? I think 3d printed parts are usually not waterproof / watertight.

EvanReese

You could look at the stl export settings and try a few, or I'd recommend trying to repair it in Mesh Mixer instead of trying with Onshape.

@Axel_Kollmenter in this case "watertight" is not actually about holding water. It's just a term that means the stl mesh is actually fully enclosed with no holes, which is needed for printing.

S1mon

I don't have any "broken" STLs handy to check this, but do the open edges of an STL show up in red if "Highlight boundary edges" is on in the View menu?

If not, this seems like a really good improvement request.

Axel_Kollmenter

@Evan_Reese Yeah ok but isnt the mesh computergenerated? I also got an 3d printer and never got this type of error message. Even if I exported the file out of onshape.

What can be the sources of error for such a hole in the mesh?

EvanReese

Yep and this kind of error is rare in my experience. I've never gotten one from Onshape either that I recall, but it can certainly happen. Sometimes if there's geometry that's borderline failing in Onshape, it can cause issues.

matthew_stacy

@greet_van_geel, if you make your Onshape document PUBLIC then others might be able to replicate, and perhaps even resolve, your slicing problem.