Cross section-based hollowing and structural enhancement

Recently, 3D printing has become a powerful tool for personal fabrication. However, the price of some materials is still high which limits its applications in home users. To optimize the volume of the model, while not largely affecting the strength of the objects, researchers propose algorithms to divide the model with different kinds of lightweight structures, such as frame structure, honeycomb cell structure, truss structure, medial axis tree. However, these algorithms are not suitable for the model whose internal space needs to be reused. In addition, the structural strength and static stability of the models, obtained with modern 3D model acquirement methods, are not guaranteed. In consequence, some models are too fragile to print and cannot be survived in daily usage, handling, and transportation or cannot stand in a stable. To handle the mentioned problems, an algorithm system is proposed based on cross sections in this work. The structural weak cross sections are enhanced, and structural strong cross sections are adaptively hollowed to meet a given structural strength, static stability, printability, etc., while the material usage is minimized. The proposed algorithm system has been tested on several typical 3D models. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness and practicability of our system.