Following Aaron’s tutorial on modeling with precision and using solid tools are an important part of the process. So this main part is grouped, I can’t figure out why it’s only a group and not a solid group. I’ve done a ton of work to clean it up. I could make it again from scratch, but I would like to know how to troubleshoot this issue.
Tutorial.skp (395.3 KB)
The top one isn’t solid because it’s nested.
There’s no need to do that.
And the group inside isn’t solid because it has internal faces.
How did you go about making that object? There should have been internal faces if it was done correctly. One could way to do that is to use Follow Me with a cross section of it.
Haha, I was wondering about that - when I made it (made an arc, offset it twice, closed it, pushed pulled it to extrude), there were only some internal faces, not all of the edges were connected with internal faces, so I deleted those, thinking that that was the reason. Ok, let me change that, thanks for your help
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If you want to do it will Push/Pull, start without the chamfer outlined. Then after extruding it, use Offset to outline the chamfer and use Move with Autofold to create the chamfer.
Here’s Follow Me.
I can make the Auto Fold version if you need to see it.
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Well I was trying to follow Aaron’s tutorial the way he did it, at least at first. I found the geometry was a lot less messy if, instead of making three circles and cutting them in half, instead I made a two-point arc and used offset to make the other arcs and then making faces by closing them with the line tool. After that I followed the video tutorial.
Either way, I added the internal faces back but it’s still not a solid group. I’m a little confused by the nesting - the outliner doesn’t show any nested geometry. I’m on iPad, so it may be missing a few features I may need.
The internal faces are what you need to get rid of inorder to have a solid group.
In order for an object to be considered a solid every edge must be shared by exactly two faces. So no stray edges, no holes in surfaces, and no internal faces.
It does for me.
Wait, I think I misunderstood - so to be solid it SHOULDN’T have internal faces? Okay, so now I have to go back and re-delete those if that’s the case. But the nesting, I don’t see how I can fix that on the iPad.
Correct. See the edit to my previous post.
Explode the top level group.
Okay, deleting all of the internal faces did the trick. I must’ve missed a few when I first did that. I didn’t have to change anything with the nesting. I didn’t see any separate group for the top level, when I exploded it, it was just individual parts, no other groups.
Anyhow, thanks again for your help, I think you’ve helped me every time I’ve posted.
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Glad you got it sorted. By the way, did you notice that the bore of that part isn’t the same radius throughout?
By the bore, did you mean the innermost arc? Not sure - but if you did, it should all be the same, I can’t see where it would’ve changed. Maybe when I added the chamfer. I’ll check in the morning (it’s the middle of the night here).
Your is the same but in the drawing you are referencing it isn’t. Look at Section A-A.
It should look like this:
Oh - I scrubbed ahead in the video, he doesn’t do that in this tutorial. It’s okay,I’m just a beginner (as if you couldn’t tell lol), I just want to learn what I can from this and then move on to the next tutorial. Thanks again.
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Yeah. I didn’t get to watch him modeling that part but I can imagine he skipped it.
He does near the end by adding a volume then subtracting it from the rest of the model using Solid Tools.
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I haven’t gotten there yet. I imagine he uses solid tools, what other 3D programs refer to as Booleans.
On the video Aaron uses native solid tools from sketchup, there are a couple plug-ins that can do a better job sometimes, the best in my opinion is Booltools from mindsight studios, it’s a paid one and Eneroth solid tools, that one is free.
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Bool Tools 2 is a great option however the OP is using SketchUp for iPad so the extension is not an option for him.
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Just curious, is there a process or checklist when determining why something isn’t a solid group? I’m having a similar problem with a new model, and I just can’t figure it out. So far I haven’t found any holes in the mesh or any interior geometry and I ungrouped everything and made it a new group from the original geometry so there’s no nesting. What else should I be looking for? Do you have a link to a video or webpage that explains it?