I use Blender for printing Vertex conversions, which is your second picture.

I remove all faces from the model and keep all edges. I extrude all the edges in one hit, usually in the up/down direction depending on the model, sometimes some manual work needed to extrude more of the edges. I then literally hold ALT, right click the edge loop, press F for fill and repeat that around the model. There is probably an automated process but it takes me about 10 minutes to strip a low poly model back to it's frame work and then solidify the framework. There are programs that do the so-overdone "voronoi" pattern with holes all through it, but it's been done so many times and running a script on a 3D model and saying "look what I did ma!" isn't really something to be proud of. Doing it yourself is the best way I will always say.

The tricky part is making sure the geometry doesn't exceed a certain degree, ideally no more than 40' so you can print without support. Removing support from geometric prints is a pain in the butt, it really is.

Quote Originally Posted by curious aardvark View Post
given the cost of 3dsmax - you might be better of spending 3 hours working through the process in meshmixer :-)
Aint that the truth... I refuse to buy Adobe, they charge Australians nearly 3 x the price. Why? our location.

We're downloading it.. not posting a 2kg package of manuals... why charge so much more for another country? I can use a VPN and buy it off them for the U.S price... but I prefer not to at all when they practice such cruddy business tactics. My money they will not get.