Patent ID: 8874248

Claim:
A method of preparing a virtual three-dimensional object for three-dimensional printing, the method comprising: obtaining a vector-based surface representation of the virtual three-dimensional object, wherein the vector-based surface representation comprises surfaces of the virtual three-dimensional object enclosing a volume; sampling the volume enclosed by the vector-based surface representation of the virtual three-dimensional object to generate a digitised three-dimensional representation of the virtual three-dimensional object; eroding the digitised three-dimensional representation of the virtual three-dimensional object to generate a digitised representation of an internal volume of the virtual three-dimensional object; generating a vector-based surface representation of the internal volume using the digitized representation of the internal volume of the virtual three-dimensional object, wherein the surfaces of the internal volume represent internal surfaces of the virtual three-dimensional object; combining the vector-based surface representation of the virtual three-dimensional object with the vector-based surface representation of the internal volume of the virtual three-dimensional object; and outputting the combined vector-based surface representation using an output device.