Monday, January 25th, 2016 Posted by Jim Thacker

Autodesk releases Meshmixer 3.3


Originally posted on 25 January 2016. Scroll down for news of the 3.3 release.

Autodesk has released Meshmixer 3.0, the latest update to its free mesh-editing software, adding tools to create multi-part objects for multi-material 3D printing, plus support for mesh unwrapping and SVG export.

From creative playground to practical 3D printing tool
Initially intended as an experimental tool for creating mashups of existing 3D meshes, Autodesk has increasingly refocused Meshmixer as a practical tool for 3D printing since acquiring the software in 2011.

The company currently describes it as “a sort of Swiss Army Knife for 3D meshes”.

New options for creating multi-material prints
New features in Meshmixer 3.0 include experimental support for ‘Complex’ objects containing internal partitions: a toolset designed to simplify the process of setting up multi-material 3D prints.

Users can generate separate partitions within a mesh by selecting the corresponding faces on its surface and using the Offset setting to turn the selection into a solid shell.

New Unwrap tool and scene-scaling workflow
In addition, there is a new Unwrap tool, which separates the mesh surface into separate flat patches, in the same way as as a standard UV unwrap operation, in order to facilitate CNC fabrication.

The unwrapped layout can be exported in SVG format.

Other new features include a new scene-scaling workflow, shown at 03:40 in the video above, designed to make it easier to generate 3D meshes that match known real-world measurements.

There are also a number of smaller features, feature updates and bugfixes, which you can read about in the software’s online changelog.


Updated 17 November 2017: Autodesk has released MeshMixer 3.3. The update revamps printing workflow, “eliminating third-party services that were … causing crashes” and making it easier to add custom printers.

Since we last wrote about the software, there have been a number of other updates, mostly bugfix and performance releases, although one important change in MeshMixer 3.1 was that the software was separated out from Autodesk’s now-defunct 123D family of 3D apps.


Availability and system requirements
Meshmixer 3.0 is available for Windows 7+ and Mac OS X 10.7+. Since this story was originally posted, the ‘experimental’ Linux edition seems to have been discontinued.


Read more about the new features in Meshmixer 3.3 on the product’s website