Howdy, ya’ll !
I am currently using sketchup for modeling 3D printing. I’ve played with sketchup for several years,. but now I’m interested in duplicating my creations.
The question that I have is : Is there anything that I need to know about 3D printing modeling so that the file that I want to print will be ready for printing?
The modeled parts that I will be making are similar to parts of a model airplane that many of us put together as kids. These parts, however model houses., Walls, siding of a variety of textures (ship-lap, logs, shingles, batten-board, etc, and roofing shingles, dormers, chimneys of a variety of stones and bricks etc. Nominally these houses will be about 8" x 12" x 6" and the prototypes are being fabricated out of wood (I’m a woodworker/wood carver), and my models come from the plans that I developed for the houses.
So, there’s the back story, I just need to know how to prepare my model for printing.
Thanks for your help in furthering this project.
The key thing is that the models need to be considered solids. The simple way to identify solids is that every edges must be shared by exactly two faces. No more and no less. And faces must be correctly oriented. All front faces out. When you create a group or component Sketchup will identify it as solid in Entity Info.
What version of Sketchup are you actually using? Your profile is unclear because it says you are using SketchUp 2018 Make which doesn’t exist.
You might want to edit the title of your post to something that makes more sense than using your name.
As I said, I’ve been "playing with Sketchup for several years, and the free version is 2017 make… I have downloaded the 2020 free version so that I can convert the .skp file to a .stl file for compatibility to 3D printing, but the actual models are being developed on my computer and when ready for print I convert the file in the online version.
Well, that is how I found that the online version could convert the file. It’s not that I wanted to do that, but it’s how I found that I COULD do that. I am not familiar with extensions or the Extension Warehouse.
I’m still learning to navigate the program.
Dave, I was setting up a model to print on my FlashForge Guider printer and when I ran Solid Inspector on it it found a quite few tiny holes that I was too lazy to fix. When I imported it into the FlashPrint driver I was pleased to see that it healed them automatically which was a big time saver!