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Designing Necklace from Brain MRI Data

Question asked by Alex Dauphin on Sep 23, 2019
Latest reply on Sep 30, 2019 by Steven McCallion

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I have some data from a Head MRI Scan .. Following some steps (GitHub - miykael/3dprintyourbrain: How to 3D print your brain from a T1 MRI image.) I am able to convert the original MRI DICOM files into STL format.

So, if you want to add some kind of holder at the tip to make a necklace, like this (but in 3D):

You need to import the STL file into SolidWorks

So, I was thinking, do you have any suggestions of how should I import it? and How do I add the holder at the tip of the brain to make it a necklace?

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Newell Voss Sep 23, 2019 8:24 AM
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Set your import options so that it comes in as a solid otherwise you won't be able to manipulate the geometry.
There are a number of ways to add a loop for hanging. Do you plan to do a metal additive print or plastic?
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- Steven McCallion @ Newell Voss on Sep 23, 2019 9:52 AM
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  You won't really be able to do much with the geometry unless you have Premium/ScanTo3D. Even then it's going to be a total nightmare with this shape.
  Honestly I'd do this in Blender.
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- Alex Dauphin @ Newell Voss on Sep 25, 2019 3:19 AM
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  Plastic .. I am going to 3D print it .. I am going to check how to do it in Blender, probably I should check Blender forums too
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  - Steven McCallion @ Alex Dauphin on Sep 25, 2019 8:43 AM
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    Probably because of its opensauciness Blender is much better when it comes to the (free) education side of things than swx is so just search for "blender beginner" on youtube and you'll get many high quality tutorials come up. The donut one being the most classic.
    You'll probably be a bit confused by the layout but this is basically what you need to do:
    - Open Blender
    - Select the cube (it should have an orange outline) and then delete the cube (press X). Depending on your settings select can be either left or right click.
    - Import your STL (scale could be wayyyyyy off).
    - Shift+A (or there's a button up the top for "Add", but Blender is all about the keyboard shortcuts. Which has rubbed off on me, it's been really good for swx, I keyboard shortcut most thing sin swx now too just because I started fiddling with blender in my private time).
    - Mesh -> Torus
    - It might be lying in the wrong plane, there should be a little menu bottom left "Add Torus". If not, press F9, you should see a little menu with basic settings for that primitive - there should be a setting for rotation, so rotate to the plane you want.
    - Select the torus and press S (for Scale)
    - Drag your mouse around until the torus is approximately the right size
    - Use your numpad numbers 7, 1, and 3 to align the view orthographically and to something appropriate for your model
    - with the torus selected press G
    - drag the torus to where you want it (note: while in one of the orthographic views it will move only in the plane you're looking at, handy!)
    - change the view and use G to line it up in the other direction as well.
    
    Now you should have a torus on your thing in the right place, but they're separate meshes.
    
    On the right there's a little tab with a blue wrench on it, Modifiers.
    - open the modifiers tab
    - use the drop down in the modifiers to add a Boolean modifier.
    - change the Operation to Union and select whatever one of your objects is ucrrently selected (Assuming your torus was still selected from moving it, click on the eye dropper and select your brain)
    - apply the modifier.
    - you've now got two models, one of a torus and one of a torus joined to a brain. Top right there's the equivalent of swx's assembly tree. Click the eyes to figure out which object is which, delete the one you don't need.
    
    /edit - you can skip the following, just export as STL and let the exporter translator take care of it.
    Blender likes quads, and the torus is currently quads. With your necklace selected, press tab, you can see the mesh. This is mesh modelling mode. It's sort of like working with Parts in swx. Until now you've been working in Object mode, which is like Assemblies in swx. If I remember correctly Fusion360 is a bit like this as well, all in the one window? It was a year ago since I played with fusion.
    You can look at the torus-brain interface and see that the meshes don't match, and that the torus is meshed in quads.
    - Press tab again to go back out to Object mode and select your necklace.
    - With your necklace selected, use another modifier - drop down list Triangulate. Apply it.
    - Press tab and look at your necklace in mesh mode, it should be all triangles and they should all be joined correctly etc.
    
    There's one thing I'm not sure about, because I've only fiddled with blender in the visual world, and that is scale (for a 3d printed real world object). You'll need to figure that out for yourself.
    
    Something probably went wrong. Swear a little. Start over. Watch some youtube tuts.
    
    Personally I think that my swx modelling is improving from playing with Blender. It's like learning a new language, you end up having to learn a lot of the basics of your own language too, things you don't even remember having learnt as a little kid! Also it's a really good compliment to swx because they're just completely different types of modelling.
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    - Alex Dauphin @ Steven McCallion on Sep 29, 2019 1:45 PM
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      Well, I hope this works, thanks ..
      Do you have any recommendations for a Blender Forum?
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      - Steven McCallion @ Alex Dauphin on Sep 30, 2019 3:48 AM
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        Actually no, just google and youtube. There's so much on youtube, just watch the donut tutorial series (for 2.80), or the series by CG Boost. A lot of emphasis on rendering and the like though.
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