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I created a low poly alien in blender and wanted to print it exactly the way I created it. It's modeled in quads which are converted to tris when exporting the stl. I know stl works with tris but it messes up the look of my object. I tried to export it as an obj file as well but I have the same issue with it.

Is there a way to prepare my file for printing without converting the quads to tris?

Thanks a lot. Cathleen

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Cathleen
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    Welcome to Blender.Se. I don't know what type of object your 3D printing device can handle, but STL, as you mentioned is the most common file format and it supports tris only (because they identify the geometry uniquely). If you see a difference between the triangolated model and the original one, it's beacuse your quads are not planar. – Carlo Mar 13 '18 at 13:31
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    Here's a possibly related question: How to make all quads or ngons on your mesh planar (2d)? – Carlo Mar 13 '18 at 13:33
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    Oh, you're right, that actually makes sense. Should've thought of it myself. I guess I have to change the model to look fine with tris. Thanks for the answer. – Cathleen Mar 13 '18 at 13:34
  • Glad it helped. You'll find some useful answers in the linked question. Sadly there is not an easy solution to the problem. – Carlo Mar 13 '18 at 13:38
  • Also, have you tried to convert the blend to triangles before exporting to stl? The edit mode command is CTRL+T – m.ardito Mar 13 '18 at 13:54
  • @m.ardito yes, that's what I'm doing right now but it messes up my model anyway. I have to go over each triangle and try to fix it. I just ignored the fact that the quads need to be planar and sadly there's no easy way to fix that as Carlo said. – Cathleen Mar 13 '18 at 14:06
  • Did you by chance apply scale and rotation to your model? normally people forget to do this, I have already printed some 3D figures with blender models I have never had problems, I could not assure the model or file format that I used because it was some time ago in the university in a couple of engineering projects, but I could be part of your problem –  Jul 04 '19 at 02:47

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