Design manifold issues

Hi. I have a drawing that is to be used as a mould in which I will be pouring plaster of paris.
The drawing basically allows for an 80mm high ring, 36mm radius and 3mm wall ring shape.
I will be 3d printing the shape. In order to ease the pouring of the plaster of paris, I had to add a flared upper rim both sides of the inner and outer walls of the ring to guide the material into the ring. the walls around the 3mm wide wall of the ring is .8mm thin.
Since I added the flared guides onto these walls, the design refuses to create a manifold stl file for printing. I have scaled the design 1000 times larger to ensure that it could calculate the angle correctly,
When viewing the design in xray mode, I cannot see any issues. as soon as I open the stl file in Cura, Meshmixer of Craftware, they all pick up the manifold issue. Anybody else experienced this issue with a very simple design ??? Insulator.zip (1.1 MB)

Hi (edit :re uploaded after deleting unused guides also)

Try this InsulatorIan.skp (1.4 MB)

I purged a lot of unused components to get the file to upload, the 3d printer template just bloats your file with a pretty useless component, I would avoid it. You can just draw a cube to simulate the machine area instead if you need it.

First thing I noticed were the huge amount of reversed (grey) faces, I saw them as soon as I switched off x ray.
I ran solid inspector2 and found 2 internal faces and 2503 reversed faces. I was able to fix these errors automatically using solid inspector.

I then made the geometry a group and solid inspector reports ok and entity info reports a solid group (manifold). The geometry has to be either a group or component to report solid in entity info.

4 Likes

Hi Ian

Thanks a million for your help.

Cool, I will select the normal woodworking template next time.

Is Solid Inspector part of Sketchup Make or Pro? I only have Make version.

If I make a group (perhaps a component) of the design, will that help to create a solid face for the design ?

Cheers

Wimpie

1 Like

If you make a group or a component of some of your geometry [which you hope is a solid], then when it is selected Entity Info will contain ‘Solid’ in the header - if it is indeed ‘Solid’…

Solid Inspector is an Extension available from the EWH, or from the SketchUcation PluginStore…
there are also some other similar tools - like my SolidSolver…
These tools work on a selected group or component-instance - and try to fix issues automatically or at least show problem areas.
It’s always best to try and make geometry properly so it doesn’t need fixing - and of course it’s possible to make an object that even the cleverest tool can’t fix !

it is a plugin and you can use it with either Make or Pro. Click on the bold text below to download the plugin.

Solid Inspector3

The guys have just about covered it but Solid Inspector will save you a heap of time if your groups/components don’t report solid. It doesn’t always fix things but most times it’s very quick.

Always try to fix errors as they pop up, reversed faces etc. It makes for better practice anyway

1 Like

Cheers Ian.

Much appreciated

Thanks a stack. I downloaded it . will check it out

Cheers

W

Thanks TIG.

Much appreciated

Cheers

W

This topic was automatically closed 91 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.