The title says it pretty clearly. If there was a feature to "weld" two pieces together, so that they could not be un-grouped, and it would make it one piece, that would be extremely useful. For one, it would allow you to make copies of 'parts' that you couldn't accidentally mess up, and for another, it would get rid of seams as found here: http://i.imgur.com/ZYVe5hr.png
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8 comments
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Guillermo Melantoni Hi Jon,
We completely agree with the ability of "baking" a group. Currently users create an STL and bring it back in, but something like this would reduce the amount of clicks and definitely make models faster since there's less computing to be made.
A question: when going from a group into a baked or welded object, how much do you care about the colors, if the group was multicolor?
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jon4397awesomenessami As I use Tinkercad for visualization only and not for 3D printing, I don't care about the color at all. If the group is baked and defaults to any given color, so long as the color can be changed, I have no problems with it. As far as multicolor goes, I don't see the need to use it.
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James Gill 245 Would this "baking" of groups also get rid of all the "holes" in the background? Sometimes I end up with a couple of shapes that have hundreds of "holes" so loading times get kinda crazy.
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jon4397awesomenessami I would expect that holes are baked with the group, and that would be one of the major benefits; the faster loading of objects. I often have many holes, cutouts, and shape modifications using the hole feature, so sometimes it takes all of 2 minutes spent waiting for it to load up and register all the holes.
It would help to keep from un-grouping too far and exposing these hole shapes, as well. -
dave 22622568 how about an option to 'copy all the selected parts to a new design and then bake all the selected parts in this design'
That way, you get to preserve all the components that make up a complex model, but they stored in a new design ( my_part_bake_1 ). The baked part is simply an automatically converted stl from that new design that appears in the current design.
2c
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rob 30581541 Multiple colors withing a group definitely proposes a problem, even for visualization. For example, a vehicle will have different colors for the tires vs. the body, lights, windows, etc. What I have done, and yes it is time-consuming, is create stl components of the various components (i.e. tires, body, etc.). If the multicolor groups would each be a corresponding item within the new "baked" group that would save a lot of time in building the baked group due to the mandatory relocations inherent to this process.
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nicoledobbins I would really like to be able to do this to get rid of all the extra junk that is grouped together. Currently when I do detailed work it weighs down the program and crashes my browser. I want certain objects to be permanently locked without using over 1GB RAM.
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rob 30581541 If you export your model, and/or the finalized part(s) you want to weld, to a downloadable .STL file and then reimport it that makes the weld permanent and "forgets" all of the solid history. Tinkercad is great because the history of your construction is ALWAYS saved unless you perform the export and import. I design items for my truck all of the time in TK, but if I had to wait for the site to build it every time it would be impossible to get anything done. So my truck is a .stl file that I import when needed so that when I build a new toolbox, ladder rack, or other handy little widget...well you get it. Best of luck...Rob
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