hii,
i have created a sketch for cnc and the mashine needs a parasolid (x_t) file…
i made shure all the way that the componnen is solid.
when i am traying to export stl file for solidworks (or even through meshmixer) its all goes bad…
any ideas?
any other ways to export from sketchup to cnc you may know?
Please expand on what you mean by “it all goes bad”. What particular aspects of the export are the problems?
If you are referring to the flattened curves in your first image, that is because SketchUp does not have true arcs, it represents them as a sequence of straight segments. SketchUp uses shading across the joints between faces so the surface looks smooth, but the corners are there. To get a smoother curve on export, you must draw the arcs using a larger number of segments in your SketchUp model (look up the help file for the circle and arc tools). They will still be segmented, but at some point the segments will approach the precision of your CNC. You may have to use the “Dave Method” (search this forum) to avoid problems creating very small edges in SketchUp.
I suppose you realize that the stl format uses triangles exclusively to describe surfaces, so the triangular mesh in your second image is unavoidable.
thanks for the quick respond!
the curves on the top of the componnent are from segments, that is not my problem,
i am having issews with the 90 degrees cut on the bottom and the smooth curve on the insepted squre on the top plane:
I’m not certain what you mean by the first part. Do you mean that the edge which is a sharp corner in the SketchUp model is coming out like a rounded and broken shape in your CNC software? That edge looks ok to me in the meshlab, so I suspect this is an issue with your CNC software’s handling of the stl. I don’t have that software so I can’t say more than that, sorry!
The square is inset by a very small amount (0.05mm), which makes it difficult to see, but so far as I can tell in meshlab it is ok in the stl export:
It LOOKS like Meshmixer is doing some additional smoothing of the file… As @slbaumgartner mentioned, the STL file does not have all of that “smoothed” geometry.
thank you all!!
is there a way to convert the file threw meshlab to parasold\ any other format that you know that will do for cnc?
Well, I’m not quite sure how much of bearing this would have on the process here, but the component doesn’t report as a solid in Entity Info. Even after I fix the errors shown with Solid Inspector, it reports as “Shiny” but SketchUp still does not recognise it as a solid.
IF a solid is needed to make this process work correctly, I suspect additional work may be needed to make the component a solid. That’s all I can say for now.
I agree with TheOnlyAaron’s comments about the smoothing part, those parts are not smoothed like that in the SKP file.
solid comp IanT SketchUp2017.skp (799.0 KB) This is 2017 version file at a guess of the version you may be using or later, please complete your profile information with SketchUp version to make it easier for others to help you.
I managed to get the component solid for you maybe that helps in some way, I think the main area of problem were on the internal corner part where the blade sits. There seemed to be some faces out of place, some other small problems too. I used the Dave Method on a scaled up copy to make the corrections because of the small faces involved with this. I have moved the component origin to the model origin, that makes sense to me, but you can move it again if you wish.
Also you are using Sketchup Layers incorrectly, the geometry were on a combination of layer 0 and the other layer that were in the file. The screenshot below shows a blank layer field meaning that the selected entities are on a mixture of layers…
I deleted the second layer, as I thought it weren’t needed anyway for this. All of the geometry of the component is now on Layer 0 as it should be.
In SketchUp, leave layer 0 the active layer at all times, so that all geometry is drawn on layer 0. Only Groups/ Components are assigned to layers. See the help files for layers Controlling Visibility with Tags | SketchUp Help
Hope this helps in some way.
woww that helpes allot!
wold love to hear if you fixed every one of them manually or if there is an easier way (im using solidinspector2 on sketchup pro) doue every time i did “fix” it set it is ok but stil didnt became solid.
thanks again
If I’m honest it were a little quirky. I had to fix them manually by moving the vertices, then it still didn’t report as a solid in SketchUp even though I couldn’t find any more errors by eye.
So I selected all the geometry and “intersected faces” “with selection”. I ran Solid Inspector again and fixed a few more errors from that and then it reported solid in SketchUp.
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