Cat-shaped infill from MakerBot, perfect for infilling cats. IT. IS. ABOUT. TIME. Glad to hear they’re still listening to the needs of the maker community!
http://makerbot-blog.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/MW_220_23.jpg
Does anyone have info on creating custom infill patterns like this. I assume it involves writing custom gcode. What slicer software allows using custom infill patterns?
I would appreciate any leads to info, guides or examples of creating and using custom infill patterns.
What a waste of resource.
Static bodies taught me that the only thing stronger then a triangle is a cat.
(looks at infill) My brain hurts.
While the CatFill is a bit of a silly thing. It did gave my an idea. I’m not sure how to implement it yet. But custom defined infills (in SVG format, so you can draw them with Inkscape) might become a feature for Cura at some point.
Svg or better yet stl or dxf might be an idea. You may wish to have a way to re-align the infill too. Fractals are another option.
Yeah, I don’t care about the silly cats but I am interested in custom infill patterns that beyond efficient internal structure, strength and material savings could be part of the aesthetics of a built piece (exposed through transparency or exposed faces, etc). So how to build them through gcode without modeling them in the original 3d model?
Design a 3d model of a block of plastic with one complete infill in it?
i know I can model the infill as discreet geometry into the original model, but what I want to learn about is how to create the type of infill patterns created automatically by slicing programs and control the geometry of that infill pattern beyond the basic patterns currently supported. But not cats. 
I meant you design the model as the model and the infill as the infill and then after scaling and re-aligning to taste, you put plastic where both infill and model have plastic.
And you don’t have to boolean you specially designed infill pattern with your 3D model then, as the slicer does it. Which prevents all kinds of nasty artifacts.
You could design infills for strength. But you can also design infills as part of you design. If you don’t have a solid bottom, and you print the infill with a design of your company logo for example?
I get that - basically a boolean operation to join the model and the fill. I’m looking for an algorithmic method like the concentric fill patterns and others generated in gcode by the slicer. I have to start by first understanding how the current patterns are generated.
Daid Braam - exactly, I am interested in generating infill patterns that may be interesting to expose (in addition to the structural benefits).
Meanwhile, others still may want do have the ability even if it is hidden. Those people would probably want to make sure they have a good perimeter and to have the perimeter be part of an OR with the infill so output = design AND (perimeter OR infill). Heck, you might even want that too, but only Some of the perimeters being in the OR. That would mean output = design AND (always_there_perimeter OR infill) where the perimeter is also part of the design.