I’m new to the Zoo community and have been trying out the Text-To_CAD option. I am trying to create a specific size gear with a specific number of teeth and specific bore. The system creates what looks like the correct size gear until I bring it into my 3D printer software to print. The printer software expands the gear to 100000% the size which won’t even fit on the printer bed. If I shrink it down to 100%, the gear is so small you can’t see it in the printer software. Is there a limit to the size of parts to be made using this software?
Hey @johntech2014! Welcome in. This sounds like it could be a problem in one of two areas: either the export of the part is not the correct units or the slicer is misinterpreting the units. Couple questions:
- What export format did you choose from Text-to-CAD?
- What slicer are you using?
Text-to-CAD does take into consideration what units you provide in your prompt. If you say " or “inches”, it should output your dimensions in inches. Same with “mm” (or any other unit of measurement). It sounds like our STL export might have a hiccup. I have had better luck with exporting STEP files, and that’s what I typically recommend users try, even if you are going into a slicer afterward.
I just tried myself. My prompt was “A 1/2 inch gear with 21 teeth” and the STL was WAY too small. I’ll file and issue and have our team look into this. The STEP I output was correct, however.
For further clarification, STEP files have the units embedded in the file, while STL units do not. A slicer needs to know what units the STL file is in, since they are unitless. This is why I encourage users to output STEP.
For further control, you can use Text-to-CAD within our Modeling App, which allows you to control the units and any other specifications you would like.
Comfortably, you can model to the tenth of a mm. You wouldn’t need to be too specific, just whatever parameters are most important to you should be included (number of teeth, bore diameter, width, module, etc).
The way I would personally go about it is bringing the STEP file into the slicer (I use Orca Slicer), and deleting the body I don’t want inside the slicer. I don’t know the capabilities of the slicer you are using, but in Orca, as long as a STEP file has two geometries that are not touching, it treats them as two bodies, and I can delete one of them.
Thank you for the feedback regarding the Modeling App. We understand there’s lots of users that don’t want to program, so we are building more features to allow for traditional CAD workflows. Hope this helps.