This is a problem I've encountered several times with blender and I've never found a good way of doing it - am I missing something?
I want to design a solid mesh pattern with holes - eg chicken wire, and apply/map/wrap it to form a shape. The result needs to be a solid mesh that can be 3D printed - so a bump mask doesn't work.
I've create this using a wireframe mesh and the skin modifier, this is ok for a simple shapes but it's time consuming and doesn't work for complex shapes.
Is there an alternative method which would be printable?