I figured out something important.

3D Printing
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1

I figured out something important. If you are trying to print something from someone’s scan and you can’t reduce the polygon count well enough, you can use Slic3r or another slicer that has a resolution setting and set it to 0.1mm for example to drastically speed up the print speed and quality. Cura does not have a resolution setting that I could find.

I tried this one STL file in Cura and in Slic3r (0.1mm resolution for Slic3r) and the Slic3r file came out alot smaller and it is printing as smoothly as can be…despite the fact that my hexagon infill is not printing cleanly.

2

Meshmixer reduces polycount too I think.

3

Meshlab’s quadratic edge collapse decimation is about as easy as it gets.

4

I was playing with Meshlab last night. It totally butchered the item I was reducing the polygon count for.

5

Reducing polygon count also increases the minimum segment size, which can solve problems with not being able to transfer and process gcode lines fast enough. It’s less of a problem than in the old days, but it still pops up.