New Feature Fridays: G‑Crafter is (finally) manifold
If you’ve ever watched G‑Crafter chew on a boolean operation and thought, “buddy… are you okay?” — same.
This week’s New Feature Friday is a big one: G‑Crafter now generates manifold geometry. It’s been a long slog, a lot of weird edge cases, and more late-night “why is this face inside-out” moments than I care to admit. But the payoff is huge.
What does “manifold” mean (and why should you care)?
In normal-human terms: manifold geometry is watertight. Every edge belongs where it should, surfaces don’t do impossible topological gymnastics, and the model is something that actually behaves like a real 3D object.
Which means two very important things:
- CSG (boolean) operations got ~30× faster.
Union / subtract / intersect are no longer a coffee-break feature. - You can now 3D print the output.
Because duh — if it’s manifold, slicers don’t have to guess what you meant.
This is one of those foundational upgrades that doesn’t just add a shiny button… it changes what the whole tool can confidently do.
The practical wins
1) CSG is dramatically faster
Booleans are core to how a lot of us model: cut holes, notch joints, merge parts, carve clearances, iterate, repeat. The new manifold pipeline makes those operations way more predictable and way faster.
If you’ve been avoiding complex booleans because they were slow or flaky, now’s the time to revisit that workflow.
2) Output you can actually print
Previously, even if something looked “fine” onscreen, it could still be non‑manifold in subtle ways — and 3D printing software will absolutely call you out for that.
Now the output is designed to be printable geometry: watertight solids that slicers can handle without playing detective.
Also: a pile of quality-of-life upgrades (aka “I fixed so many bugs”)
Manifold was the headline, but it wasn’t the only work happening. Along the way, I tackled a bunch of long-standing paper cuts:
- 3D dimensions (finally feeling like 3D dimensions)
- Midpoint selection (because sometimes you just want the middle, not a treasure hunt)
- PartLab upgrades, including:
- Explode Components
- Join Components
- AutoDogbone on Shapes
- Undo that actually works
Which sounds like a joke until you’ve lived the alternative. - Animation tool: you can now select a custom rotation axis
So you’re not stuck rotating around whatever axis the universe decided you deserved. - Updated 3d Grid: Magically sizes to the actual dimensions if your project. And it's pretty clear what XY&Z actually are. And the grid lines reflect what you actually set the grid to. I know. Finally.
- Totally New Offsets method for Laser Cut Parts, courtesy of things actually being manifold.
Why this took so long (a quick peek behind the curtain)
Going manifold isn’t just “flip a switch.” It touches everything:
- how shapes are generated,
- how meshes are combined,
- how normals and winding behave,
- and how booleans resolve edge cases that only show up when you least want them to.
Basically: it’s the kind of change where you don’t just fix the feature — you fix the system.
And yes, I’m just one dork, so it’s been a grind. But this is one of those upgrades where the work is invisible… until it suddenly isn’t.
Try it out
If you’ve got a project that used to lag, fail booleans, or produce “looks fine but won’t slice” geometry — give it another shot. This update is built for exactly that.
As always: if you hit weirdness, tell me. The whole point of doing the hard infrastructure work is so everything else can get better faster from here.
Happy Friday — go make something unreasonably solid.
