Mesh Repair and Imports
Imported meshes can carry duplicate vertices, stale normals, boundary edges, non-manifold geometry, and degenerate faces. Repair tools help make those models printable before they reach Prepare.
Run mesh checks when:
- An STL slices strangely.
- Faces appear inverted or missing.
- The slicer creates unexpected gaps.
- Supports appear inside what should be solid geometry.
- Boolean operations fail on imported geometry.
- A model came from scanning, sculpting, or a low-quality export.
Mesh repair can report:
- Vertex count.
- Triangle count.
- Duplicate vertices.
- Boundary edges.
- Non-manifold edges.
- Degenerate faces.
- Normal direction issues.
Use the report to decide whether a quick weld/normal fix is enough or whether the source model needs deeper cleanup.
Common repair actions:
- Weld duplicate vertices.
- Recompute normals.
- Flip normals.
- Auto-fix imported mesh geometry.
- Apply conservative STL import healing.
Do not treat auto-fix as magic. Inspect the model after repair and re-slice before sending to a printer.
Combine operations create editable boolean features with parent links in the timeline. Parent mesh edits can recompute downstream combine results when the source geometry remains usable.
For important functional parts, prefer clean CAD solids over repeated mesh booleans when possible.
If an imported model slices poorly, repair geometry before changing slicer settings. Slicer settings cannot reliably fix non-manifold geometry.