Curve-based model splitting lands in AIMIA's 3D Editor

Oct 18, 2026 Last reply: 1 day ago 3 Replies
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The detail that caught me off guard: a closed loop of cyan points drawn along the seam between sleeve and torso, one tap on Start cut, and the left arm comes away as an independent part, hauled aside with gizmos. No manual mesh surgery, no boolean cleanup, just a hand-drawn curve.



The feature is Curve Split, built into AIMIA's 3D Editor in MakerLab. The workflow runs in three steps: draw the region, tweak the cut surface, then execute. For the adjust stage there is a choice between Planar fill and Bulge fill, and the maker goes with Bulge fill before pulling the Area slider from 51.3% down to 18.2%. Height sits at 4.2 mm, taper angle at 10 degrees, tolerance at 0.2 mm. A direction gizmo sits on the green highlighted joint surface to steer the cut, and after starting, a Saving dialog appears briefly.



The demo model is a cartoon boy figurine, and the cutter menu lists more than one option, with Hinge Cutter and Shell Cutter alongside. The color parameter is set to PLA Basic Silver. Alignment pins can be dropped in straight away for easy assembly. That strikes me as a natural companion to a curved seam like this one.



One thing still open: whether the tool ends up as part of MakerLab, a plugin, or a standalone package has not been confirmed. The AIMIA beta is being rolled out in waves through MakerLab.


Choosing Bulge fill over Planar fill looks like the smart call to me. A shoulder seam wraps around a rounded surface, and a flat cutting plane through that geometry would either clip into the arm or fall short on the far side. Fitting the surface to the drawn curve, then trimming it back with the Area slider, keeps the cut following the shape instead of fighting it.

I am curious about the 0.2 mm tolerance. Does it control how closely the fitted surface hugs the drawn curve? And around the shoulder, where the seam bends in two directions at once, does Bulge fill still produce a clean fit on its own, or does the maker nudge the direction gizmo section by section to keep the joint surface even?

One suggestion for the maker: with the arm separated, placing the alignment pins the feature supports directly onto the joint faces would make putting the figurine back together straightforward. It could also be worth running Hinge Cutter on that same sleeve seam as a comparison, to see whether a hinged joint works better than a pinned fit for a figure like this.

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