Hi there, this is my first post.
I’m creating an organic shape made out of many copied components. These components intersect eachother and create unwanted internal geometry. I’ve scoured the web but with no luck.
I’d like to merge my components into one geometry and destroy the inner geometry that’s created by these intersections. Essentially id like an outer shell / hollow / solid model.
Thanks so much for everyone’s help I’m super new to SketchUp and 3D Modeling in general.
If you post a picture, then it’ll help us help you. But you can use solid tools (in SketchUp Pro) to create an outer shell.
Thank you! I was trying to close the back face first to see if I could then somehow erase all the hidden geometry’s and be left with a shell. None of the solid tools are working for me, they say I have no solids
There’s an excellent extension to help with making things solid. It’s called Solid Inspector².
Extension Warehouse Link: Extension | SketchUp Extension Warehouse
Tutorial:
Good luck!
The operation of merging solids to a common outer shell is only well-defined for solids.
What you are looking for is closing holes (manually, or by algorithm, e.g. in MeshLab).
A similar operation to outer shell that is defined for non-solids is the convex hull, but it also covers all indentations of concave meshes.
If you attach the model itself we may be able to give you some clear instructions on how to continue. The image leaves many questions.
Hi everyone thanks for you help. I’m attaching a sketchup file… I’ve followed the tutorial and its helped me fix the first one. But now… i have 42 solid components in my selection, and when i use the outer shell function it for some reason does not create another solid group. I’m 90% sure i’ve followed all the directions, any suggestions in what to look for to fix this would be incredible
OuterShell_Help.skp (1.4 MB)
Have you tried using Solid Inspector2?
Pretty easy to orbit inside the group and erase the unneeded geometry to make it solid.
You ought to hold off adding textures until after you’ve completed editing the group. The textures will make it harder to identify issues.
weird… i did that but the autofix says it cant do it. Did you manually clean that?
Did you notice that Solid Inspector doesn’t show “Fix” in the UI? The reason for that is the fix is ambiguous. There’s no way it can tell which of the edges and faces should be removed.
Yes. As I said:
It would be worth taking a little time to learn how to create and fix these sorts of things manually. It’ll make it easier to understand what’s going on with tools like Outer Shell and Solid Inspector aren’t able to give you the results you expect.
Thanks so much for your help DaveR, totally got me on track.
hi there,
where do you find this “convex hull” tool?
It’s a method not a tool, I did not refer to a specific implementation…
https://lmddgtfy.net/?q=convex+hull
