designing a body structure for 3D printing for a quadcopter. few little issues I worked through… but one has one a bit concerned on how it’ll print. I’ve gone through and actually went inside the model and deleted odd faces and such, but one area I can’t “weld” I guess to the basic shape. it’s where cylinders are punching into/through an angles face. Do I even need to worry about it? will it be structural just punching through the face?
file if there is someone who wants to play…
If it is an issue… I’d like to know HOW to fix it instead of having someone fix it for me… that way I avoid it next time around Thanks a bunch X6Layout.skp (1.2 MB)
That will prevent your model from being printable. Use Intersect Faces to create the intersections and then trim off the tube on inside. You’ll want to scale the model up before doing this though.
Intersect Faces. It’s in the right click Context menu. Select the faces of the tube and the top surface it pierces, right click and choose Intersect Faces>With Selection.
I wonder how you got this far drawing that without having used Intersect Faces.
You are missing the point then. SU has problems forming tiny faces, things less than a mm. So the standard practice is to scale up, edit and scale down.
Those in the know simply use a large component copy to edit.
To 3D print you really want your model to be a SketchUp “solid”. The same sorts of issues that cause SketchUp not to consider a model to be solid will also cause the model not to print successfully. At a minimum that requires making a component or group of the geometry. For this kind of model you will also want to get ThomThom’s Solid Inspector2 and/or TIG’s Solid Solver extension. They will examine your model and tell you what aspects are preventing SketchUp from considering it to be a solid. Many kinds of errors they can also fix for you.
ya, i know about the make a group or Component … it usually fixes any small issues. was more wondering if having the studs imbedded instead of attached would make the printer actually see them as 2 diff things, making the stud able to just be pulled out of the angled faces… Wasn’t sure if grouping would make the inside stuff weld up into one unit.
No. Grouping just gathers the geometry into its own isolated context, it does not alter or edit the geometry in any way. But until it is grouped, SketchUp won’t give you any indication of whether it thinks the object is solid or not. And, as I wrote earlier, many of the same issues that cause SketchUp to reject a group as solid will also cause problems with 3D printing. So, it’s a good check to make a group and see what SketchUp says.
I doubt that the way the cylinders penetrate the boxy shapes would cause a 3D printer to see the model as more than one object. It’s more a question of whether the export software would accept the model and generate a printable stl file from it.
well the cool thing is with a mac, STL and OBJ files will display in the column view all shaded if it’s a acceptable file and will be all black or show no preview at all in there are issues…
hey!! thanks for all the help guys… basically have the unit done… thinking I need to add some sorta legs mounting system but for now It’s good… take a look if you’re interested…
I prefer to have both objects a component each, and then use solid tools. Then you dont have to clean up tiny little trimmings. If not already said, use solid inspector often.
Sorry, I also made a mistake. I edited it but I made a mistake saying you can use the “subtract” feature of solid tools. That’s only for using the first component as the “cutting tool” then you select the second component and it will cut out the shape of the entire first component. That’s not what you want.
And I forgot it’s only in the pro-feature. So DaveR was right. You can use use intersect and then hand delete what’s inside.
For 3d printing. I constantly check my models with “Solid Inspector 2”. And always look for reversed faces. It took me a while to get the hang of it and I’m still learning.
ya, the reverse faces thing got me early on using this program… 1/2 the issue is not being able to visually see which is which as the reversed face just looks like a shaded face to me. Changed the colors so the front face is bright green and back faces are bright red… stand out now