Materialise Mimics

All downloads can be found here.

We recommend that you close all other applications before installing your Materialise software product. You must have administrative access to install the software.

To register and activate your software, you must first complete the installation. After installation, the Materialise License Wizard will automatically open. From there, select the appropriate option based on the type of license you have or wish to obtain.

Every license under maintenance includes the option to request an emergency key file. This key file is used when your software becomes deactivated unexpectedly and the normal reactivation process fails.

For Mimics version 27 and earlier

The emergency key temporarily reactivates your software for six days, allowing you to continue working while our support team assists you with a permanent reactivation. The number of emergency key files you can obtain is limited, depending on your maintenance package, so this option should only be used in urgent situations.

For Mimics version 27.1 and later

For newer versions, you can use the License Rehosting/License Transfer functionality available in the End User Portal.

This allows you to quickly transfer your licenses to a backup or emergency system without needing an emergency key file.

For Mimics versions 27 and earlier

In standard cases, your software will remain active for 6 months, after which you will be required to reactivate your license. Your software will display a warning when your license is about to expire. In certain cases, the duration of the license might be shorter.

You can consult the expiration dates on our password website after logging in with your CCKey or voucher code.

For Mimics version 27.1 and later

In standard cases, your software license remains active for 12 months. After this period, you will need to reactivate or extend your license to continue using the software. The reactivation process requires an internet connection to connect with the license server.

Before your license expires, the software will display a warning notification to remind you to renew or reactivate your license in time.

A license means having the right to use a Materialise software product under certain conditions. If you have a valid license (in the form of a CCKey or an Activation ID), you will be able to activate your software. If your license is no longer valid, you will not be able to run the software. Depending on the type of license you have, you can renew it or prolong it after contacting your local office.

We safeguard our software with security password files. Approximately every 12 months, we change the way a password file is generated. Therefore, you will need to renew your password file every 12 months. You will still be able to use our software as long as you apply for the renewal of your license password file — this is free to do! 

If you bought a new license and the payment has not been registered in our system yet, you will only receive a two-month password file. This is because we allow our customers to activate their license once we receive the order and before we receive the payment. Once the payment is registered in our system, it will be possible to generate six-month password files.

In Mimics 28 and later, license updates happen automatically, provided that your computer is connected to the internet. 

Applicable for Mimics 27 and older versions:

To set your local license to automatically update via Mimics Core, please follow the steps below: 

1. Open Mimics Core. If the Key Request Wizard is not shown automatically, open it via Help — License — Key Request Wizard.
2. Select License — Instant Activation — Enter the license CCKey, then click Next.
3. The license will be updated via the Internet.
   • If the firewall blocks the outgoing connection, you can request a key file at https://passwords.materialise.com/.
   • In the Key Request Wizard, select License — I want to register a license key file. Browse for the key file and click Next.
4. No matter which method you follow, the licenses will be updated for both Mimics Core and 3-matic.

To set your local license to automatically update via 3-matic, please follow the steps below:

1. Open 3-matic. If the License Wizard is not shown automatically, go to Options — Help — Licenses — Activate or Renew Local License — Automatic Activation. Then, enter the license CCKey and click Next.
   • If the firewall blocks the outgoing connection, you can request a key file at https://passwords.materialise.com/.
   • In the License Wizard, select Activate or Renew Local License — Manual Activation. Browse for the key file and click Next.
2. No matter which method you follow, the licenses will be updated for both Mimics Core and 3-matic.

For Mimics 28 and later, please consult our help guide.

For Mimics 27 and older, please consult our Floating License Installation Guide for more information. 

Your system ID is a code generated by us that is unique to each computer or server. To find the system ID, you will first have to install your Materialise software product.

For detailed instructions, please read this article.

A key file is a small file (*.matkey) that will activate your software license. The key file is unique to each system (it is based on your System ID) and can only be obtained if you have a valid license (CCKey or voucher). For detailed instructions, please read this article.

CCkeys are used with Mimics 27 and older versions. For Mimics 28 and later, please consult the article about Activation IDs and Entitlement IDs in the following question.

The CCkey is the unique code that specifies your Materialise software license. If you have multiple Materialise products, you will have multiple CCkeys. The CCKey is needed to activate your license, but also for future downloads, upgrades, and other occasions. The format of the CCKey is xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx.

Your CCKey is communicated to you by email and/or mentioned on the invoice.

If you ordered your software in CD format, the CCKey can be found on the inside of the CD sleeve. If your license has already been activated, you can find the CCKey in the system information of the software, via the registration wizard.

If you do not have a CCKey, please contact your local office.

You can also verify your CCKey by opening your Materialise software. Go to Licenses under the Help menu and select 'Show license and system information.' If you have a CCKey, it will be shown at the top.

Activation IDs and Entitlement IDs are used by our ID-Based licensing system, which was introduced as of Mimics 28.

• An Entitlement ID is the unique code that gives a high-level view of all products and modules in a contract. It grants access to the download page but is not used for software activation. 
• An Activation ID is the unique code that specifies your Materialise software license. If you have multiple Materialise products, you will have multiple Activation IDs. The Activation ID is needed to activate your license, but also for future downloads, upgrades, and other occasions. The format of the Activation ID is xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx

Your Activation ID and Entitlement ID are communicated to you by email and/or mentioned on the invoice.

If you do not have an Activation ID or Entitlement ID, please contact your local office.

You can also verify your Activation ID by opening your Materialise software. Go to 'Licenses' under the 'Help' menu, and select 'Show license and system information.' If you have an Activation ID, it will show at the top.

A voucher is a unique code, just like a CCKey or Activation ID, that activates your Materialise software license. A voucher is not necessarily connected to a commercial license but will often serve to activate evaluation licenses.

In most cases, your voucher will be communicated to you by email together with the download link for your software evaluation.

If you do not have a voucher yet, please register your software (by choosing an evaluation license) or contact your local office. 

In Mimics Core, you can find preferences under the ‘Help’ menu. In 3-matic, they can be found under the ‘Options & Help’ menu.

In Mimics Core, open ‘Preferences’ from the ‘Help’ menu. Under the General tab, you can set both the Local Autosave Frequency and the Mimics Flow Autosave Frequency.

In 3-matic, open ‘Preferences’ from the ‘Options & Help’ menu. Under the General tab, you can adjust the Recovery File interval to define how often recovery files are saved.

The Project Management tab in Mimics is the bar on the right side of the screen that contains lists of all the operations done on the dataset; it lists your masks, measurements, parts, STLs, etc.

In Mimics Core, open ‘Preferences' from the ‘Help’ menu. Under the Visualization tab, select 3D Views, and adjust the background color as desired.

In 3-matic, open ‘Preferences’ from the ‘Options & Help’ menu. In the tabs, navigate to Visualization → Viewport, and set the background color according to your preference.

The bottom-left number in the axial view is the slice position according to the patient coordinate system (this information is read from the DICOM header upon import). The bottom-right number in all views is the slice position in Mimics Core. It starts at 0.00 and increases with the slice distance.

The slice distance in the sagittal and coronal views corresponds to the pixel size since these views are reconstructed by Mimics Core from the original axial data. The slice distance of the axial images can be checked under File > Organize Images. 

When rotating a part in the 3D view, Mimics rotates around the virtual center of all visible parts. Here, the coordinate system also counts as a visible part. Furthermore, a part can be outside of your view but still be 'visible.' To rotate around just your part, make all other 3D parts invisible and turn off the coordinate system.

The 'Edit masks' tool allows you to edit your mask directly in the 3D view. To do so, you need to have 'Toggle mask 3D preview' turned on. This generates a 3D preview of your segmentation mask that you can work on (second button in the 3D section of the quick access panel next to the Viewport).

Note that in Mimics 18 and earlier versions, to edit masks in 3D, you have to use the 'Edit masks in 3D' function in the 'Segment' menu.

The Scripting module makes use of Python.

You can read more about Scripting in Mimics on the scripting forum.

You can find scanning protocols for the most used applications via this link.

DICOM is a file format widely used in clinical settings where images can be shared and includes DICOM tags, which are essentially header files containing information about that particular image.

DICOM is the abbreviation for digital imaging communications in medicine.

Importing ultrasound data is possible in the research version of Mimics Core and in the medical version from Mimics 24 onwards. Here you can find more information on how to export DICOM data from your ultrasound machine for GE and Philips.

These compressions are a form of noise reduction, they work as follows.

Lossless:
No compression.

CT compression:
Medical CT scanners work with the Hounsfield scale. See the item about Hounsfield Units in the Segmentation tab of this FAQ for more information. Since there is no tissue type that generates gray values from -1024 HU to -824 HU (first 200 values), the values in this range are typically just noise. CT compression then sets these values to -1024 HU.

Note that technical CT scans might contain materials within this range, so for these types of scans, this CT compression should not be used. In that case, choose Lossless.

MR compression:
For MR, there is no defined standardized scale like the Hounsfield scale for CT. Typically the noise is present in the first 10 values. MR compression sets these values to 0.

Cut Air compression:
For non-calibrated CT scans such as Cone Beam CT and µCT, this compression sets all the gray values corresponding to the first peak in the 3D histogram to zero. This first peak typically consists of air and noise.

The .mphtxt file that is generated for the export to Comsol needs to be imported in Comsol as a mesh, not as a geometry. In the Model Builder tree, right-click on Mesh1 and choose Import. Here you can select the .mphtxt files that 3-matic exported. Click Import to complete.

Hounsfield units make up the grayscale in medical CT imaging. It is a scale from black to white of 4096 values (12 bit) and ranges from -1024 HU to 3071 HU (zero is also a value). It is defined by the following:

-1024 HU is black and represents air (in the lungs). 0 HU represents water (since we consist mostly of water, there is a large peak here). 3071 HU is white and represents the densest tissue in the human body, tooth enamel. All other tissues are somewhere within this scale; fat is around -100 HU, muscle around 100 HU, and bone spans from 200 HU (trabecular/spongeous bone) to about 2000 HU (cortical bone).

Metal implants typically have very high Hounsfield units. Therefore, they are attributed the maximum value in typical 12-bit CT scans (3071).

You can switch between Hounsfield units (HU) and gray values (GV) in the Preferences. Go to Help > Preferences > General; here you can choose between Hounsfield and gray values for the pixel unit.

Selecting Hounsfield will use a scale of -1024 to 3071. Selecting gray values will use a scale of 0 to 4096. Both scales are based on 4096 = 12-bit values (212).

MRI does not work with a fixed grayscale range like CT. Medical CT images typically consist of 8-bit (4096 values) Hounsfield units (HU), which is a predefined scale for gray values of tissues in a human body (see the item about Hounsfield units above). MR images can be 8-bit or 16-bit and the range of gray values depends on the MR machine (field strength, gradient, coil, etc.) and its settings (SE1, SE2, etc.). Therefore, every MR dataset has a different scale and we cannot provide predefined thresholds.

You can remove noise from your mask using the Region Grow tool. This tool allows you to isolate and retain only the spatially connected regions you wish to include.

After applying a Threshold, your mask may contain unwanted structures. To clean it up, select the Region Grow tool and click on the main area you want to keep (for example, the bone). All connected regions will be copied to the target mask, while any unconnected or extra fragments will be excluded automatically.

On the image level, you can use the Image Registration tool in Mimics Core (Image menu). For this to work, both projects need to have the same units (mm, um, etc.). You can also use the various registration options in the Align menu to register a part onto the scan, onto a mask, or onto placed landmark points.

Your mask consists of multiple unconnected parts. Use Region Growing (Ctrl + R) to select one region of interest before calculating a part.

This error usually pops up in the Multiple Slice Edit tool when you have edited in two neighboring slices. The algorithm needs at least one empty slice between two edited slices in order to interpolate.

You can use the Reslice Project tool in the Image menu. If you choose to reslice the images, the anatomical proportions will be preserved, but the dimensions and grey values of the dataset will be recalculated and interpolated. The quadratic interpolation will have a small blurring effect on the images.

The optimal quality setting will result in the most accurate model possible. It will also apply some optimization techniques — triangle reduction and smoothing. Whenever you create a 3D model, you can adjust these settings by clicking 'Options' in the 'Calculate 3D' window. However, calculating a complex 3D part in optimal quality can take some time, so in some cases, you would only want to use this setting on your final 3D model. If you just want to have a quick view of the 3D model, you could use lower-quality settings so it will calculate faster.

The smooth and reducing functions are available under the Fix menu in 3-matic. Mimics Core also offers the ability to perform smoothing and triangle reduction of your STL in the 3D Tools menu.

In 3-matic, the wrapping tool is available under the Fix menu or the Design menu, if you have access to the Design module.

After remeshing your part in the 3-matic FEA module, copy (Ctrl + C) your remeshed parts and paste (Ctrl + V) it into your Mimics Core project. The remeshed part will be added to the Parts. When you copy a volume mesh and paste it into your Mimcs Core project, it will be added as an FEA mesh.

In Mimics Core, you can then do a material assignment to the volume mesh based on the gray values of the DICOM images. There are different export formats available in both Mimics Core and 3-matic to export your remeshed part, volume mesh, and assigned material properties for your solver software: Ansys, Abaqus, Nastran, Comsol, Fluent, or Patran.

Once you have your 3D object created, you can optimize the mesh in 3-matic. A tool available to all users of the Base module is 'Improve mesh' in the 'Fix' menu. For more advanced mesh operations, the FEA module is required. With the Remesh menu of the FEA module, you can apply a 'Uniform Remesh' or 'Adaptive Remesh' to your STL. The latter is specifically intended to improve the mesh of anatomical structures in medical applications.