Wednesday, 29 August 2012

Laser Slicer

I've written a little script, available on the scripts page, to slice up a mesh in Blender and export the slices as shapes in a SVG file that can be cut on a laser cutter. The mesh should be a manifold solid.
The script creates a panel within Blender's 3D tools menu where the thickness and dimensions of the cutting material can be specified. The slices will be roughly arranged to conform to the dimensions of the cutting material, although it does not do a perfect job of this, and exports a SVG file with the name 'blender file name'-laser.svg to the directory where the Blender file sits. The slices are all grouped together in the SVG file, but if you ungroup this top-level grouping then each slice can be rearrange on the page. Slices are taken in the z-direction  so make sure the mesh is orientated properly. By default 1 Blender unit is 1 metre. AS SVG files do not understand dimensions the scaling of the SVG file might change when loading it into your laser cutting software, so check for this. Below are the slices through the head of our holy mother, Suzanne.


Alas poor Suzanne, I knew her well.
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29 comments:

  1. Unknown2 September 2012 at 14:52

    Hey Ryan.
    Nice work. 2 comments:
    1: We have a lasercutter at school and I am going to test this out for sure!
    2: It sounds like the innerworkings of this script could be modefied to maker a "section plane slice" addon for blender am I correct? I am not much into addon development in blender but that has been a sore miss by all architects of blender for many years... I would like to have a look at it if you think it is possible?
    Thanks man!

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    1. Ryan2 September 2012 at 15:42

      Hi Ejnar.
      As I work in an architecture department I probably should have thought of that :). Yes I'll have a look see if I can get something together.
      Regards
      Ryan

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  2. Patmo14114 September 2012 at 22:03

    Yeah, this would also go really well with 3d printing

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  3. ilikebass31 October 2012 at 22:01

    I really want to try this script but I keep getting these errors in blender 2.62 when trying to slice the same object.

    File "C:\Users\testing3\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.62\scripts\addons\LaserSlicer.py", line 210, in execute
    main(self, slicer_settings)
    File "C:\Users\testing3\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.62\scripts\addons\LaserSlicer.py", line 147, in main
    pno=slice.data.polygons[0].normal
    AttributeError: 'Mesh' object has no attribute 'polygons'


    Any help would be greatly apprecciated.
    Thanks!
    Dave

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    1. Ryan1 November 2012 at 01:28

      Hi Dave.
      I think the problem is that you are using a pre 2.63 version of blender. 'faces' became 'polygons' in 2.63. You can either get a newer copy of Blender or try changing every 'polygons' word to 'faces' in the script.
      Regards
      Ryan

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    2. ilikebass1 November 2012 at 03:54

      Hey Ryan -
      It is an amazing script! I upgraded to the latest version of Blender and it works now! thank you very much! I did notice however a few of the slices near the top did overlap ever so slightly.....I'm assuming this is why you mentioned ungrouping and possibly re-arraigning them.
      Dave

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  4. Ryan1 November 2012 at 06:15

    Yes some rearrangement may be required. I haven't yet managed to figure why there is a slight overlap sometimes.
    Hope it proves useful.
    Ryan

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  5. steeph24 January 2013 at 09:04

    This looks promising. But I can't get it to work. I have Blender 2.65 now and it doesn't throw any errors (except if I haven't saved the blender file). But as soon as I press the "Slice the object" button blender uses 100% of CPU time and hangs with no output on the command line. What exactly is supposed to happen when this button is pressed?

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    1. Ryan24 January 2013 at 16:08

      I have tested both version 0.4 and 0.5 on 2.65 and it works fine. So maybe you are using version 0.5 and the mesh you have selected is not manifold because 0.5 does not accept non-manifold meshes? Or if the mesh is very large it can take a long time. Blender dimensions are metres for the script so if you have a mesh 2 units (2m) high and the default laser slice thickness is 2mm you are cutting a 1000 slices which will take a long time especially with v0.5. If the mesh is that big make it smaller or try using v0.4 which is quicker and will accept non-manifold meshes. You should see your selected mesh sliced into slices and an svg file should appear in the directory where you saved the Blender file with the layers printed out.

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    2. steeph24 January 2013 at 22:38

      Thank you very much for your response. It just takes a lot longer than I thought it would and with the default settings it would probably have taken forever.

      Now I have one more problem. The mesh has an open end, which appears to be a problem for the script (all sorts of very strange shapes come out). At least it worked fine with other meshs. It's the first time I'm using blender. So I probably just have to figure out how to fix the mesh first.

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    3. Ryan26 January 2013 at 06:45

      The older version, available on the scripts page, could handle non-manifold meshes. The new one won't like it.

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  6. Dlaha6 April 2014 at 15:30

    Oh cool, is there any solution how to separe every layer in to own file?

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    1. Ryan6 April 2014 at 15:47

      That wouldn't be too difficult to do. I'll see if I can make some time this week to have a go.

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    2. Dlaha6 April 2014 at 16:06

      oh, it would be nice, It would help me alot.

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  7. Ryan10 April 2014 at 14:42

    The laserslicer v0.7 script now has a 'separate files' option which will write out one svg file per slice.
    Enjoy.

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    1. Dlaha11 April 2014 at 13:11

      thank you very much

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    2. Dlaha11 April 2014 at 13:33

      oh, one more thing, every slice is now snaped to left top cornder, can you please disable it, to be in real position?

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  8. Unknown15 June 2016 at 08:00

    HELLO!! the script don't working in blender 2.77a. the menu isn't created.

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  9. Ryan20 June 2016 at 15:05

    I just tested it on 2.77a and it worked OK for me. The menu should be under the misc tab of the 3D view tools bar.

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  10. MisterLambert5 January 2017 at 12:49

    Your script seems great and I am really excited to be able using it but for now, I am unable to make it work: no error but the menu is not created under the 3D view toolbar. I am using blender 2.78.a.
    Thanks!

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  11. Ryan7 January 2017 at 16:33

    I just checked it on 2.78a. Looked fine. The menu appears in the 'Misc' tab of the Viewport tools bar.

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    1. MisterLambert10 January 2017 at 09:12

      I don't know what I am doing incorrectly but I cannot make it work, I have no "Misc" tab at all under the "3D Viewport" / "Tools" section. I only have "Transform", "Edit" and "History" entries...
      What can I do in order to try to understand what's going on?
      I am quite new at using blender, sorry if I am asking stupid things.

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  12. Ryan12 January 2017 at 05:33

    You should have little vertical arranged tabs on the left of the tools panel in the viewport. 'Misc' should be one of them if the laser slicer addon has been activated.

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  13. 3Dstudio18 April 2017 at 13:03

    Excellent Script. Thank you Ryan.
    A question above concerned the placement of the slice in the file. Is it possible to center it?
    I have done similar things in the past cobbling together several programs, cutting the slices with a vinyl cutter (adhesive backed paper) and stacking them with good results. Now it is all in the one program I prefer to use.
    Again...thanks...nice work.

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  14. Ryan19 April 2017 at 01:48

    Thanks for your comment 3Dstudio.
    It's probably about time I updated this script. I will have a look and see if I can add this as an option.

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  15. 3Dstudio20 April 2017 at 19:07

    This comment has been removed by the author.

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  16. 3Dstudio20 April 2017 at 19:08

    Wow. I didn't expect such a quick response.
    I find the slicing process incredibly valuable and helpful. If you would like to seevhow I have used it, let me know how I can reach you. I am Savstudio(at)aol(dot)com.
    Steve

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  17. Unknown18 April 2018 at 16:09

    Hello Ryan and thanks for your script! I'm having the same issue as some others in this thread: I've installed and activated your addon, but there is no "misc" tab in my tool bar. I'm working on a Mac - could that be the problem? I'd love to get this resolved so I can use your slicer. Thanks so much for your help. Kelly

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  18. Ryan22 April 2018 at 11:03

    Hi.
    The tab is now called 'Laser' in the latest version of the script. If you still can't see it you'll have to tell me what version of Blender you're using and what version of the LaserSlicer.
    Ryan

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