Orientation selection for printing 3D models

Abstract

With the rapid maturing of 3D printing technologies, research on optimizing models to be printed in geometrical perspective has been considered; for example, model hollowing, partitioning. Much of these works however do not deal with the basic property that has to be determined in every 3D printing moment: model orientations. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to find reasonable orientations for fabricating arbitrary shaped 3D models with conventional layer-by-layer 3D printers. We observe that model orientations can affect some major factors representing the quality of 3D printing. We formulate a number of desirable criteria for the orientation, including material use, resolution error, and support remainder visibility. By optimizing these criteria, our proposed method automatically generates candidate orientations that produce cost-effective and visually pleasing printing results.