Good morning friends,

SOLIDWORKS 2022 introduced what is called "Hybrid Mesh Modeling" in the culmination of many years of mesh modeling tool upgrades. This means that SOLIDWORKS can now much more gracefully manage and manipulate mesh files (e.g. STL, OBJ, etc.). If you, like me, have tried working with these files directly in SOLIDWORKS (or, frankly, any other solid modeling system) you'll have noticed how terrible the performance becomes in a hurry, especially with high-fidelity models.

For some years now, it has been the common wisdom among makers and 3D printing enthusiasts that you'll want to use a service like Windows 10's 3D Builder app or Meshmixer, but these tools can be clunky, and making appropriately sized registration features can be quite a challenge. With SW 2022 (which the Makers Offer is currently on), we can use these new hybrid mesh modeling features to directly edit 3D printing files to prepare for printing at home. 

The British Museum has a lot of 3D scans of important historical artifacts, and one of my favorites is a clay tablet from 1750BC - predating the Bronze Age Collapse - from a customer (Nanni) to a merchant (Ea-Nasir) that the quality of his copper ingots is bad. It's pretty funny and you can read the complaint here: Read The World's Oldest Known Customer Complaint To Copper Dealer Ea-nasir (allthatsinteresting.com); you can download the tablet file here: Clay tablet - Download Free 3D model by The British Museum (@britishmuseum) [0903925] (sketchfab.com)

This is the file that I used, and it is quite hard to 3D print, but a simple split and creating some registers for toothpicks has allowed me to prepare this part for printing! Below is a video which I (sleepily) recorded this morning. I hope you enjoy and are able to use this same technique to modify the 3D models you find online for your purposes!