If so, I’d like you to slice a small STL file, for any printer settings (your typical layer/temps are fine) and send me the resulting gcode. Message me for details, as I can’t attach the file here.
I’m just looking to see how various slicers cope with touching and interpenetrating objects.
Hey,
I use Simplify3D if you want to send me the file I’ll slice t when I get a chance
You can get different results for interpenetrating objects in Simplify 3D by selecting ‘Separate Connected Surfaces’ in the Mesh menu. I also have Simplify 3D and have been mucking around with this setting this week. Could you post a pic of the model? Is there any effect you’re trying to achieve?
No particular effect - just looking to survey available slicers to see how well they handle touching and interpenetrating objects, as well as holes formed by shapes with inward-pointing normals. I have written a little CAD program that generates things like this, and was curious how far I could push it without doing the full intersection on the shapes 
Once I get Crofty’s file going (it looks OK but I can’t seem to view it) I’ll post results here for anyone who is interested.
I’m interested! Looking forward to seeing your findings.
OK, after looking around for a gcode viewer, I found an online one here.
This is the model, 3 cubes touching, with the end one pushed in a bit to overlap:
This is the gcode produced by Slic3r (cut through about halfway up to show how it merges the cubes) You can see it has merged everything nicely:
This is the gcode produced by Curaengine. It also merges OK, this view has some artifacts around the edges that are actually not there (it looks fine in Repetier’s preview)
This is the gcode produced by Kisslicer. It handles the penetrating cubes OK, but leaves the touching ones as separate:
This is the gcode produced by Skeinforge. The overlap region is not filled at all, and there is some rubbish outside the cubes:
Finally the results of Simplify3D (Crofty’s file was read just fine by this viewer, but for some reason Freecad couldn’t read it…) Similar problems to Skeinforge:
