3D Design: Creating Triangle Mesh For Exporting

Carveco Tutorial: Exporting Triangle Meshes

Carveco allows you to export triangle meshes from reliefs for use in 3D printing, laser engraving, or other external software. This tutorial covers how to generate a mesh and save it as an STL or OBJ file.

🔹 Creating a Triangle Mesh

1. Open a relief (e.g., Pegasus) and rotate to preview the shape.
2. Go to Relief > Create Triangle Mesh.
3. Choose your tolerance—lower values yield smoother meshes.
4. Pick your mesh type:
   • Open Mesh – mesh with no base.
   • Closed with Flat Plane – adds a flat bottom to the mesh.
5. Click Create and allow time for processing.

🔹 Saving the Mesh

1. Once the mesh is created (highlighted in blue), click Save.
2. Choose a destination folder and filename.
3. Select file format: STL (commonly used for 3D printing) or OBJ.
4. Click Save to export the file.

🔹 Verifying the Export

1. Reset the relief (optional) and go to Relief > Import > Import 3D Model.
2. Locate and open the exported STL or OBJ file.
3. Position the imported mesh in your workspace to confirm it's been saved correctly.

🔹 Optimising Triangles & Tolerance Explained

When you create a triangular mesh in Carveco, you’re converting the smooth relief surface into thousands (or millions) of tiny flat triangles. These triangles define the geometry used for machining, 3D printing, or exporting to other software.

The Optimise Triangles option intelligently rearranges how these triangles connect to:

• Reduce the number of unnecessary triangles in flat areas.
• Align triangles more closely with curved shapes or important features.
• Prevent long, skinny triangles that can cause machining or 3D print issues.
• Create a mesh with a more consistent size and shape for each triangle.

Enabling optimisation means Carveco can simplify the mesh while preserving detail, making your file smaller and easier to process. If you leave it disabled, the mesh may be denser and less efficient, especially in areas that could have been simplified.

The tolerance setting controls how closely the mesh follows the original relief:

• Low tolerance values (e.g., 0.001 mm) generate more triangles and capture fine details, perfect for high-detail work like engraving or small 3D prints.
• Higher tolerance values (e.g., 0.1 mm) produce fewer triangles and smoother shapes, ideal for large-scale models or when file size matters more than fine detail.

The two settings work hand-in-hand: Optimise Triangles uses your chosen tolerance to decide where triangles can be merged without visibly changing the surface.

Tip: For precise work or visible details, keep the tolerance low and optimisation enabled.