3-Matic

3-matic puts the Engineering in Engineering on Anatomy. 3-matic is truly unique

software because it is able to combine CAD tools with pre-processing (meshing)
capabilities. To do this, it works on triangulated (STL) files and as such, it is
extremely suitable for organic/freeform 3D data such as the anatomical data
resulting from the segmentation of medical images (from Mimics). Because of this,
we like to call it Anatomical CAD.
Import your anatomical data in 3-matic to experience real Engineering on
Anatomy. With 3-matic you can conduct thorough 3D measurement and analyses,
design an implant or surgical guide, or prepare a mesh for finite element modeling.
Since 3-matic makes it possible to import CAD data as well as doing reverse
engineering of anatomical data to CAD data, it is a perfect complement to your
CAD package.
Uses of 3-matic:
Perform 3D measurements and engineering analyses
Design patient-specific implants or surgical guides
Prepare anatomical data and/or implants for Finite Element simulations
Main Features:
Copy/paste anatomical data from Mimics
Import any CAD file
Reverse engineering to IGES
Export to all major FEA/CFD packages in the right format

Mimics Innovation Suite

A Complete Toolbox for Engineering on Anatomy

The Mimics Innovation Suite is a complete set of tools developed for biomedical
professionals that allow you to perform a multitude of engineering operations
starting from medical imaging data.
The Suite consists of several complementary products and services:

Mimics
o Software for medical image segmentation and 3D model creation
3-matic
o Software that combines CAD tools with meshing capabilities for
anatomical data
Synthes ProPlan CMF
o Software for cranio-maxillofacial surgical planning
Engineering services
o Skilled engineers who help you realize your biomedical engineering
projects and bring them to a higher level.
Anatomical models
o Tangible, accurate and realistic models, produced through 3D
Printing.

Here at Materialize, we are the innovators you can count on. To ensure this, we
have an ISO quality system in place and both Mimics and 3-matic have the
necessary clearances for the US and European market clearance. The Mimics
Innovation Suite is the industry standard software for processing and editing
anatomical data derived from medical images. With our powerful and user-friendly
Suite, you can perform a multitude of engineering operations such as segmenting,
measuring, designing and modeling.

3-matic:
3-matic puts the Engineering in Engineering on Anatomy

3-matic is truly unique software because it is able to combine CAD tools with preprocessing (meshing) capabilities. To do this, it works on triangulated (STL) files
and as such, it is extremely suitable for organic/freeform 3D data such as the
anatomical data resulting from the segmentation of medical images (from Mimics).
Because of this, we like to call it Anatomical CAD.
Import your anatomical data in 3-matic to experience real Engineering on
Anatomy. With 3-matic you can conduct thorough 3D measurement and analyses,
design an implant or surgical guide, or prepare a mesh for finite element modeling.
Since 3-matic makes it possible to import CAD data as well as doing reverse
engineering of anatomical data to CAD data, it is a perfect complement to your
CAD package.

Use 3-matic to:

Perform 3D measurements and engineering analyses

Design patient-specific implants or surgical guides
Prepare anatomical data and/or implants for Finite Element simulations

Main Features:

Copy/paste anatomical data from Mimics

Import any CAD file
Reverse engineering to IGES
Export to all major FEA/CFD packages in the right format

Case study on wind tunnel models:

Prepare your Scale Models in very less time!
3-matic software is the ideal solution for scale models, wind tunnel models,
concept models, and much more. With 3-matic, you no longer need to struggle
with CAD systems. There are no problems with feature recognition based software
or histories, because now you can make adjustments directly on the mesh.
With 3-matic, in less time you can:

Combine different formats into one solid part or assembly

Adjust wall thicknesses after scaling
Thicken A-surfaces and make parts watertight
Add ribs to reinforce walls
Remove small features such as fillets and holes, and simplify assemblies
Design fixtures directly on parts
Split models into single pieces, and ensure fit with build platforms

Current version of 3-matic:

3-matic STL Version 9.0:
Leuven, Belgium August 05, 2014. Belgian Additive Manufacturing pioneer
Materialise is thrilled to announce the launch of 3-maticSTL 9.0. 3-maticSTL is an
innovative, flexible software tool that allows for design modification and
simplification, 3D texturing, remeshing, forward engineering, and much more all
on the STL level.
With this release, Materialize took many of the suggestions of its customers into
account. The main priorities for the users were to focus on rendering, robustness,
usability and new design functionalities. This updated software enables the
creation of watertight designs that will ensure the quality of 3D Printed parts.
New key features and improvements include:

New rendering with a ruler to allow faster manipulation and visualization of

models
Automatic rib pattern creates a clean rib structure that conforms to the 3D
model
Point-based patterning create an overall pattern in one click.
Randomized porous structures
Conformal structures that follow the geometry of the 3D model
2D UV page for easy positioning of the 2D texture
Slice-based texturing export a 2D texture to the Magics Build Processor,
which handles the slicing of even large 2D textures

About Materialize:
With its headquarters in Leuven, Belgium, and branches worldwide, Materialise
has been playing an active role in the field of Additive Manufacturing (AM) since
1990. In addition to having the largest single-site capacity of AM equipment in
Europe, Materialise also enjoys a stellar reputation as a provider of innovative
software solutions. They have used their experience and expertise to create a better
and healthier world through their involvement in AM for industrial and medical
applications, and by providing bio-medical and clinical solutions such as medical
image processing and surgical simulations. Materialise has developed unique
solutions that make a world of difference for its many customers with their

prototyping, production, and medical needs. These customers range from large
companies in the automotive, consumer electronics, and consumables sectors; to
famous hospitals, research institutes, and clinicians; to individual consumers
interested in bringing their own unique creations to life through. materialize or who
want to purchase a celebrated .MGX design.

This latest update has been implemented via version 9.0, after the company took
feedback from their users on what they thought may have been missing from the
software thus far. According to Materialize, the main priorities for their users were
to focus on rendering, robustness, usability and new design functionalities. Some
of the more important changes to this software include:

Point-based patterning:
This feature will allow you to copy an object multiple times by simply selecting
points within another object where those copies shall be placed.

Automatic rib pattern:

This new feature creates a clean rib structure that conforms to the 3D model. The
ribbed structure can be manipulated by the user, and will follow the curvature of
whatever model it is added to, for additional support.

Ability to render with a ruler:

This allows for faster manipulation and visualization of models, and also improves
upon transparency rendering, as well as enhanced details.

Conformal structures:
Users are able to create conformal structures which follow the basic pattern of the
surface of a particular 3D model.

2D UV page for easy positioning of the 2D texture:

Allows users to easily and intuitively manipulate and place a 2D texture on a 3D
object.

Randomized porous structures:

This will allow the user to create porous structures within an object in a random
pattern, allowing the user to select the amount of porosity, as well as the
randomness, and reproducibility of structure.

Slice-based texturing:
Allows for the exporting of a 2D texture to the Magics Build Processor, allowing
for a 2D texture to become a 3D texture. It will also eliminate data size problems,
as it skips the STL conversion of the 2D texture.

Modules of 3-matic:
3-maticSTL Texturing Module
Efficiently create textures, perforations and patterns on your STL data and printed
models
Texturing can be the perfect tool to individualize your designs. With 3-matic, we
offer 3D texturing directly on the STL file, (which can later be printed with
RP/AM technology). And with 3-matic, you have the flexibility to quickly change
and preview 3D textured components without having to go to external suppliers.
With the texturing module, you can efficiently create textures, perforations and
patterns on your STL data.

For texturing, start from a 2D bitmap. This can easily be converted into a 3D
texture:

Why add texture to your digital models?

Aesthetic Textures:
To personalize your part

Functional Textures

For better grip

To avoid finishing work (since layers are masked)

To improve aerodynamic properties

To change the acoustic properties.

The Key Benefits of using the 3-matic Texturing Module

3-matic Remesh Module:

The Remesh module allows you to fully prepare your parts for CAE applications.
The surface mesh is optimized through different manual and automatic remesh
operations, which control the quality and size of the parts surface triangulation.
The Remesh module also offers a volume meshing functionality, which lets you
create Tet4 and Tet10 volume meshes. These surface meshes and volume meshes
can be exported to Fluent, Ansys, Abaqus, Comsol, Patran and Nastran file
formats.

3-matic Lightweight Structures Module:

Reduce the weight of designs, replace solid volumes; create porous designs while
minimizing costs and material usage.

Nature uses precisely designed structures to create shapes that fit the needs of
strength, flexibility and rigidness while still keeping them light in weight. The
creations of similar structures are very difficult and often not possible to achieve
via traditional manufacturing technologies. One of the key advantages of additive
manufacturing is the flexibility to create shapes which are impossible or too costly
to produce with the traditional technologies. Optimizing your designs (creation
lattice structures) and translating them into lightweight components is therefore
regarded as one of the most promising potentials of the Additive Manufacturing
(AM) industry.

The Key Benefits of using the 3-matic Lightweights Structures

Module:

The Lightweight structures module offers a unique combination of a tool set

equipped with:
o creating uniform and random internal structures,
o creating structures following the contour of external surfaces
o While also giving freedom to connect internal structures with different
external surfaces.
3-matic allows you the flexibility to use structures from its internal library.
You can grow your library based on your own design needs by designing
structures in CAD packages and easily importing in 3-matic.
3-matic uses highly innovative internal technology and links to Materialises
data preparation software to directly export sliced files for printing. This

powerful combination means that the limitations and issues related to

computation of complex structures are completely bypassed.

3-matic CAD Import Module:

With the CAD Import module, you can create STL data from Iges, VDA, Vrml,
Catia V4 and V5, UG, Pro-E and Step files. 3-matics interactive CAD import
reads the surface structure of your CAD file and lets you create detailed surfaces
by taking low-accuracy surfaces and reloading them with a higher resolution.

3-matic CAD Link Module:

The CAD Link module gives you the possibility to easily bring your file back to
CAD. As a combination of the segmentation tools and intelligent automatic
splitting, this module offers you the complete solution to convert STL files to Iges
or STEP. Included in the conversion is a feature recognition where, for example,
planes will be recognized as planes.

3-matic - Remesh case study:

For case study of Westland Helicopter, 3-matic software is used generating
surface meshes for their CFD projects. WHL (Westland Helicopters Limited)
wished to expand the range aerodynamic data available for this helicopter beyond
that accessible from wind tunnel testing. This required the generation of a new
CFD model of the helicopter. During the project, Westlands Fluid Dynamics and
Environmental team faced several challenges, which they discovered could be
tackled easily using 3-matic.

3-matic-Remesh reduces time needed to generate watertight

surface meshes:
Lacking a 3D computer model of the helicopter, a subcontractor scanned the
surface of a wind tunnel model. Reverse engineering the scanned data resulted in a
fi le that contained too many surfaces (534MB STEP fi le) to read into their
surface-meshing tool, Gambit 2 , on the fi rst try. The data could be processed after
the number of surfaces was reduced manually. Unfortunately, two complex but
significant details, the FLIR and winch, were omitted completely, because these
objects were poorly scanned and the subcontractor couldnt repair the data. In
addition, the supplied surfaces didnt join to form a consistent shell. At least one of
the surfaces supplied was physically impossible to create a real solid. It wasnt
feasible to proceed with this project without a significant effort to repair the bad
geometry. However, the missing components would still be missing. At this stage
Materialize flew to Westlands aid, providing them in a few days with a high
quality surface mesh that comprised all components.

Fig. a

Fast preparation and repair of the defective scanned data:

The omitted elements were essential in this project. Thats why the fi rst thing the
3-matic team did was to repair the defective data. This process involved
segmentation of the FLIR and bracket and repair work to the surface mesh, like the
removal of all overlapping and intersecting triangles. Next, our 3-matic engineer
gave the winch body model the same treatment.
The scanning process didnt capture all features completely. The winch brackets
connecting the winch to the helicopter body for example could only be scanned
partly (see Fig. A) However, these brackets were easily reconstructed in 3-matic
by sketching and creating a cylinder on the scanned data.

Fig. b

Rapid import and repair of the reverse engineered data:

Materialize staff also generated the surface meshes for the bad geometry in the
reverse engineered surfaces supplied by the subcontractor. See figure 2.a & b for
an example. All this repair work took about 17 hours. Had the original scanned
data instead of the often imperfectly reverse engineered surfaces been available,
the 3-matic team estimates that they would have been able to create a quality
surface mesh in less than a third of that time.

Fig. 2a

Fig. 2b

3-matic-Remesh reduces time needed to generate watertight

surface meshes:
The degree of skew in the resulting high quality triangle surface mesh conformed
to the conditions imposed by CFD software, in this case Gambit or T grid from
Fluent. The optimized mesh was then grouped into faces for export to the fluent fi
le format (see Fig.3). With a single mouse click we created a box around the
model, which is a highly labor-intensive task in CFD pre-processing software. The
box enabled the creation of volume meshes representing the air around the
helicopter, necessary to analyses the air flows. It took us only ten hours to transfer
the 3D model into a mesh ready for flow analysis.

Fig. 4

Good CFD results of optimized model:

Further, Westland could turn these faces into volume meshes using TGRID. Later,
they solved and post-processed the volume meshes using FLUENT software.
Designer said The CFD results of the model supplied by Materialize were very
good; for example, the drag of the aircraft at the design point was overestimated by
less than 4% compared with the wind tunnel tests.

References:
[1] www.materialise.com/3-matic
[2] http://www.materialisedental.com/download/en/2061419/file
[3] http://software.materialise.com/3-maticSTL