Check that it fits: mocks, zones and the slide-in test
Check a part against the thing it has to fit: mocks that are shown but not printed, the overlap check, and the slide-in test that moves one piece into another.
The question behind most designs is "will it fit?". A bracket has to clear the pipe, a case has to take the board, a lid has to close over a battery. ShapeDis answers by measuring the model against stand-ins for the real objects, instead of leaving you to find out after a print.
Parts, mocks and zones
A design is made of three kinds of piece, and the Features tab lists each kind as its own group.
| Kind | What it is | Printed? |
|---|---|---|
| Parts | What you are making. | Yes, they are exported. |
| Mocks | The thing your part fits, holds or mounts to: a phone, a pipe, a circuit board. Shown and checked. | No. |
| Zones | Names for regions, including empty ones (voids). | No. |
If your design has no mocks, the Features tab says so and offers Suggest mocks. It puts a question in the chat box asking what the part fits, holds or mounts to, and sends nothing until you press Send.
The overlap check
Every build measures each part against every mock and every other part. An overlap bigger than 0.001 mm³ is a problem, and the message names the two pieces and the volume. That already catches a screw hole that misses its screw or a wall that runs into the board. See what the checks look at.
The slide-in test
Not touching is not enough for pieces that have to go together: a battery has to slide into its bay without hitting anything on the way. The slide-in test moves one piece along a direction and measures the collision at every step.
- Open the Print tab and open Slide-in test. It appears when the design has at least two parts or mocks.
- Slide picks the piece that moves, and Into picks the piece it moves into. Either can be a part or a mock.
- Direction is one of X+, X-, Y+, Y-, Z+ or Z-. The test cannot run when Slide and Into are the same piece.
- Distance is how far to move it, in your units. It starts at 20 mm.
- Press Run test.
The result is either "Clear along the whole path", or "Collides" with the volume of the worst overlap and the travel at which it happens. The path is measured at 21 positions, from the start to the full distance. If a position could not be measured, the result says so and does not call the path clear: an unknown is never reported as a pass.
The test is recorded in the chat, so the AI knows the result and can change the design to clear the path.
Limits
- A mesh you uploaded (an STL, for example) must have at most 20,000 triangles to go through the slide-in test. The limit applies to meshes. Solids made in ShapeDis are not affected by it.
- The test moves one piece in a straight line. It does not find a path around an obstacle.
- It measures the model as drawn. How tightly two printed pieces fit depends on your printer and material, so print a small test of the joint before the whole part.
Try it on your own part
Describe it in plain words and watch it appear in 3D. Free to start, nothing to install.
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