I’m in the process of building the 3D-printed model of Big Boy locomotive as shown at Free STL file 4-8-8-4 Big Boy Locomotive 👦・3D print design to download・Cults but how do I quarter the wheels? There is 3D model of the locomotive created from SolidWorks but the wheels are not quartered. You may need SolidWorks Viewer to look at the mode. Also, the axles for driving wheels will not fit the bearing blocks of the spring sets. How do I modify the bearing blocks in Blender3D?
I haven’t seen the files but some generic comments. You need an account to download the files. Also, working with STLs after the fact in Blender is never fun.
- Convert the tri’s to quads and see how bad the mesh looks after that.
- Try to remesh and then decimate to get workable geometry.
- You may need to retopologize parts the mesh to get what you need.
- Symmetrize when you can.
To chop stuff up try some booleans and see what the geometry does. You may get lucky and only need to clean up a little.
The build instructions on the website stated the model was built with no tolerances and sanding was required to make parts fit. If that is not the issue then you can resize parts in Blender with axis constraints if you can separate parts.
Epic build. Best of luck.