3d print missing walls

I designed a gerber multitool case and it looks great on ketchup(my first design) but when printed walls are hollow and missing…i set to 100% infill as well any help appreciated I’m extremely frustrated. ALPHA AND OMEGA GERBER.skp (1.2 MB)

Sketchup lol excuse me

You’ve got many reversed faces that need to be corrected. The blue faces are all inside out. This causes problems for 3D printing.

There is at least one missing face and a bunch of internal faces and bad geometry you need to clean up.

Try this. I fixed the bad geometryand added the text to the component. It shows as solid now and it should be printable. Compare it to your model to see the differences. I also purged a bunch of unused stuff which vastly reduced the file size.
ALPHA AND OMEGA GERBER.skp (164.5 KB)

dude your f***ing awesome…ill try it now

so like i said this is my first attempt with sketchup, could you maybe explain what you did or what i didn’t? I’m kinda confused. And as far reversed faces and bad geometry i really dont know what the difference between bad or good is.

There are a lot of things I did. I turned on Hidden Geometry and removed many unneeded edges, some of which were visible, some hidden. I removed a bunch of internal faces as well as some bad ones on the opposite side from the view I showed and I corrected the orientation of the reversed face–those shown in blue. I exploded the 3D text and made it part of the geometry of the holder and then made it a component checking to see that SketchUp considered it “solid” which is important for 3D printing.

SketchUp is a surface modeler and surfaces have front and back sides. They are differentiated visually by the color. You need to make sure there are no exposed back faces in your 3D models.

I know it is exciting to think about making a tangible object from something you’ve drawn on the computer but as with cabinetmaker’s apprentices from 200 years ago, you need to spend time learning how to use the tools and sharpening your skills before you can make the fine furniture.

1 Like

When i made the design i made it in 2d and then used the push pull tool to make 3-dimensional by dragging each piece to desired thickness, but i really am brand new to anything like this. And ya it is exciting but overwhelming somewhat. How would you recommend i learn to do this right? Because I’m just winging it lol

Start with the tutorial videos on the SketchUp site. Pay attention to the basic tools and learn to use them correctly. Then you can move on from there.

Starting from a 2D drawing is good but it can cause problems as it did for you. I’m guessing you drew the body of the tool holder with the inside of the walls as a 2D thing and tried to go 3D from there. Something like this.


Maybe you had even more lines, too.

A better way to start it would be to make the back 3D and then raise the walls on top of it.


And it keeps going from there.

ya your exactly right thats how i threw it together. Ill give it a shot, so blue walls are backwards and white aren’t? So what is a blue wall exactly?

I already told you. Blue indicates you’re seeing the back side of the faces. White is the front. It’s not bad to see the back face when you’re looking at something that is 2D as in the first image in my previous post. SketchUp, being a 3D modeling application assumes you’ll be making it 3D and front face is down. No big deal. If you start dividing that face and then make parts of it 3D, you’ll likely wind up with inside out stuff like you did in your model.

ALPHA AND OMEGA GERBER version 2.skp (527.3 KB) This is my updated version didn’t come out half bad, my remaining issue is the belt loop doesn’t seem to print fuzed well to sheath, is there a way to fix this? i breaks off easily as if the printer didn’t know to join the 2 as a single object.

It looks like you had some internal faces between the main body and the clip.

This should work better.
ALPHA AND OMEGA GERBER version 2 internal faces removed.skp (583.4 KB)