Hello, i am trying out Sketschup Maker 2017 (am not a professional). Made a nice design of a small model part (thickness 1 mm) with ‘Offset’ and ‘Push-pull’. Slicing and printing works fine (PLA on Ultimaker2). All dimensions also work out fine. Problem is how to make this a solid. Solid is needed for some strenght. Now the print shows only the bottom and the walls (about 0.2 mm thickness), is in fact the model is hollow, a shell. Suggestions ?
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It helps when asking question if you give us images or the model so we know exactly how to help you.
One thing to be aware of, SU has problems forming tiny faces, if you are working in things in the mm range you are better off scaling up by 10 or 100 then scale down when complete, or export to .stl at an appropriate size.
As @VahePaulman and @Box wrote, it is always helpful if you can attach images or better a skp file so that we can be sure we are understanding your question correctly. But here’s a stab anyway…
Do I understand correctly that you created a model that SketchUp says is a “solid”, but when you 3D print it the printer creates a hollow shell consisting of just the walls of your “solid”?
If so, you need to address the problem in the 3D printer software, not in SketchUp. SketchUp (and the stl export most commonly used for export to 3D printers) is a “surface modeler”. That is, the model describes the surface of a solid, but not what is inside that surface. The 3D printer software understands this and offers you choice of what kind of “fill” you want to do. No fill will produce a shell like you describe, with just enough wall thickness that the material shouldn’t collapse. From there you can specify greater amounts of fill (usually involving a web or honeycomb-like pattern) until you reach total fill. They provide these options because both the print time and materials costs increase rapidly as you put more material inside a “solid”.
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I build my own solids with ruby code in SU Pro, and do not see this. But
there maybe a slicer option that will help. I use Cura and if the ‘only
follow mesh surface’ option is checked the print will be hollow,
As they said above, share your file so we can have a look, also have a look into SketchUp Plugins to assure that your designs are printable.
There are two definitions of solid: one is a surface model, so it will have very thin walls and when you have it printed the printer will assume it is one big solid and it uses a lots of print material print because it fills up the whole vol. That means the cost of printing can be say 10 x of what the same item would be if it had say few mm thick walls…
There are a number or web based articles on the subject and if you look at the forums available here there is one for 3 d print. There is another issue if you stick with your present approach is over hangs. The PLA is hot when first laid down and needs to be supported for short period of time till it is self supporting. As noted it would be best if you can post the model here .
Here is one of the net articles I happen to have laying around;
solidworks models: design a printable 3d file. The URL on my print is cut off so search for that article name FYI Solidworks Tutorial: Use Solidworks for 3D Printing, 3D CAD Software
Thanks for the response, with this information and from others I have solved the problem and now have a solid wall of 1 mm PLA on the whole of the model. It is a very small part 10 x 22 mm and with several click-in functions (holding and connecting other small parts). Now after a few print runs (PLA) it works very nice. Thanks again!!
Kind regards
Ben Veldhoven
Thanks for the response, with this information and from others I have solved the problem and now have a solid wall of 1 mm PLA.
Kind regards
Ben Veldhoven
Thanks for the response, with this information and from others I have solved the problem and now have a solid wall of 1 mm PLA.
Kind regards
Ben Veldhoven
Thanks for the response, with this information and from others I have solved the problem and now have a solid wall of 1 mm PLA in the whole model. From the printed version it is easy to see that this is much stronger.
Kind regards
Ben Veldhoven
Thanks for the good response, with this information and from others I have solved the problem and now have a solid wall of 1 mm PLA.
Kind regards
Ben Veldhoven
Thanks for the response, with this information and from others I have solved the problem and now have a solid wall of 1 mm PLA in the whole of the model.
Kind regards
Ben Veldhoven
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You don’t need to reply to everyone individually, we all see all posts.
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