Engrave/depress Logo into 3D Object

Hi, I’m hoping someone can help me figure out how to engrave/depress my company logo into a 3D object. I converted the logo from SVG to STL and imported it into Sketchup. I can push/pull it, however when I put it on a 3D object, like a slab, or a test coaster I made, I can’t get it to depress into the other object. I must be missing something. Any help would be greatly appreciated!!

It needs to be in the same context as the face you are trying to engrave it into, and to have cut the face into ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ the logo.

It also should have its faces exactly parallel to the face.

It might help to lower the logo below the face, then use Edit/Intersect Faces…

Can you post the model here, if less than 3Mb, or put it on the 3d warehouse or Drop box, and share a link to it?

I posted the logo model in the above post. I was trying to put it into my coaster model (below; as a test). I had it on the top flat face and tried doing an intersect and that didn’t work. Since then, I’ve been just drawing a quick slab by drawing a rectangle and push pulling it up and putting the logo on top of that so that’s it’s on the face and doing an intersect.

Coaster.skp (1.2 MB)

Sorry, so you did and I didn’t notice it. Must try harder! That’s the second time I’ve done it recently.

I’m replying from my phone, so can’t use the model from here anyway. Maybe someone else can help?

Scale up but 10x or 100x and try again.
Sketchup has a problem with Tiny faces.
You can scale down when you have finished and the edits will remain.
Or better still, search the forum for ‘the dave method’.

I have no idea what that means.

EDIT: @endlessfix got here right after me with a much clearer explanation. Listen to him!


Are you familiar with the scale tool?

Select the troublesome geometry (preferably inside a group or component), hit the Scale tool, select one corner, click/release and drag outward, type in 10x or 100x and hit Enter. Your geometry is now 10 times or 100 times bigger than it was before. Perform whatever operation, then scale back down.

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Well then you have some homework to do. Upper right hand corner of the forum screen is the search magnifying glass, you can use it to search for “The Dave Method”. Which is a more detailed account of the steps @Box and @MobelDesign outlined here.

Short story: Your model is too small to work with. You need to make it bigger to work with then shrink it back down to the size you want. x 10 or x100 are easy increments to work with when working metric. The “Dave Method” involves making your object a component and then editing a scaled version of your component while leaving the original in place, this can be easier than editing the original as it skips the step of scaling back down.

You will need to understand how to use the scale tool as well as how to use components. These are both basic aspects of skp that will really move your modeling forward to understand so now is a great time to learn.

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Ok, I get the concept, but not sure what you guys mean by tiny faces. Where would said tiny faces be? I just recently removed some small edges that were on the underside of the arrow that I had forgotten about and that needed to be removed for 3D printing. I’ve updated the original file I posted.

The curves around the edges of the letters you are trying to extrude are composed of a lot of tiny straight lines. SketchUp has a tolerance of 1/1000", if points are closer than that they will be considered the same point. Skp can allow these lines to exist but it has trouble computing/making them, so the way to make something that small is to build it larger and shrink it.

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