VMD-L Mailing List

From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Thu Apr 06 2006 - 09:45:01 CDT

Hi,
  This does depend greatly on the software the printing people
are using. If they can't accept the STL files generated when you
have atom spheres in the model, then the best course of action would
be to change your representation to "MSMS", as almost all of the
3-D printing packages I've seen will accept the geometry from MSMS
surfaces. (some packages won't accept VDW models because the spheres
intersect with each other, which can also upset their software..)
Let me know if you need more help with this.

  John Stone
  vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu

On Thu, Apr 06, 2006 at 04:39:53PM +0200, Jean Richelle wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I have used the 3D rendering facility of VMD to create a STL file
> (the PDB source is the DNA part of 1FOS).
> I gave the STL file for a "3D printing" to a specialized company; but
> they told me that there is a problem in the file : for each sphere
> half of the triangles locate the "material" correctly, i.e. inside
> the sphere, but the other half locate the "material" outside the
> sphere. They told me that this could be due to the order of the
> triangles in the file. They tried with different programs, and the
> problem can not be solved, and appears with all of them.
> Does anybody knows about STL and such type of problems ?
> Thank you for your help.
>
> Jean
>
>
> --
> Jean Richelle <jean.richelle_at_ulb.ac.be>
> Directeur Tél: +32
> 2 650 3587
> Centre de Culture Scientifique <http://www.ulb.ac.be/ccs> Tél: +32
> 71 600 312
> rue de Villers 227 Fax: +32
> 71 600 305
> 6010 Charleroi GSM: +32
> 474 560 502
>
> 

-- 
NIH Resource for Macromolecular Modeling and Bioinformatics
Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
University of Illinois, 405 N. Mathews Ave, Urbana, IL 61801
Email: johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu                 Phone: 217-244-3349
  WWW: http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/~johns/      Fax: 217-244-6078