Bob,
I've just started 3D printing myself. I've been focusing on complex
ball-and-stick models (I posted some questions about WRL output not too
long ago), as there seems to be very few people doing these type of
models. By most accounts, doing surfaces or cartoons is more
straightforward, and in many cases you can find things already on the
NIH 3D print exchange, or send something through their pipeline.
Questions answered as best as I know:
On 10/03/2016 01:02 PM, Robert Hanson wrote:
Can someone give me a summary of capabilities and limitations in PyMOL
re 3D printing?
For example:
Q: What output file types are supported? (WRL, X3D, STL[ASCII/binary],
other)
WRL is the best bet for export. It only exports what is in the scene.
Q: Does the generation of these include algorithms for ensuring
closure or for stitching together objects in order to not have ragged
overlap?
No. This has to be done manually and is the biggest pain for any output
from the visualization software I have tried. You might be able to dump
it into one of the available online tools, but I have never really
tried. I've developed a Blender python script to work with PyMOL output
VRML files specifically for ball-and-stick models. It is a work in
progress but it does model clean up, manifolding, and if desired it can
manually put pins/holes in certain cylinders/spheres so models can be
printed as separate pieces and stuck together after the fact. I'd be
happy to share it with anyone interested.
Q: What is needed to add support struts so that the model is connected
and strong enough?
Really has to be done manually. NIH pipeline may have ways of automating
this. For VRML output, one can just use distance measurements with
dash_gap set to 0 to make struts. I use this for H-bonding as well.
Q: If features are not amenable to printing (labels, perhaps?), are
they automatically ignored? Need to be manually removed?
Just hide them before exporting to VRML format
Thanks,
Bob Hanson
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