I’m relatively new to printing.
I noticed that if details are probably smaller than the printer resolution they disappear from the sliced preview, in my case the trunk of a tree is omitted resulting in the top part reported as “floating”.
I tried using 0.12 quality but I guess it still too small.
Before I go back and change the original model, is there a smart option in the slicer to “inflate” parts of a model under the printing threshold?
There is only one setting that will universally change the size of details. That can be found in the scale setting in the slicer but know that it changes the entire geometry of your model.
Alternatively, you could experiment with line widths and layer heights but as you already surmised, if the resolution is below the filament width… well… the laws of physics are very egalitarian, they apply to all of us equally.
You try experimenting with these settings but I highly doubt it will produce the results your seeking given your screen shots. But the beauty of this hobby is the joy in trying different things.
I suspected that my wishes were hitting the wall of reality.
“The only way to be sure, is to nuke the entire site from orbit”
In my case I’ll have to go back to the original drawing board and make those trees have fat stumps.
Before you do, you may want to try the “Arachne” setting, slice and preview for completeness and line width. If line width comes up to say 0.3mm, you may be in luck and could just try printing using the “Arachne” wall generator.
Thanks, I followed your suggestion and gave it a go.
And effectively it does produce more walls, but gaps are still there, smaller but present. Funny thing I don’t get the “floating” warning.
You have about 5 layers for the height of a tree crown after slicing (with a 0.2mm layer that is 1mm), isn’t that a bit small? Have you tried slicing with a 0.2mm nozzle to see if it would be printable at all?
If that was my model, I would try thickening it by an amount of 0.2mm at all directions, that might help. To do this, however, I would resample the model and build a new mesh.
I have found this problem before on some STL files that I have downloaded. The original suggested fix was to edit the original file. Since that was not a viable option, I added some standard parts, from the Add Part menu, like discs, torus, cube, etc. to fill the gaps. and then generated a new STL to use. It worked really well. In one case a number of post [tall skinny discs] strategically placed tied two seemingly “Floating” sections together.