I'm new to SketchUp and 3d printing, is this model 3d printable?

I’m trying to make a model for a project in school.
Can anyone tell me whats wrong with this model/is it fine to print? SolidSolver says its intersecting itself, while SolidInspector says its completely fine.
INeedHelpPlease.skp (1.3 MB)
Please help.
(it may be small, but i’ll scale it to the size i want later)

There’s something odd looking near the left ‘pointy’ end - when viewed in Xray mode.

And when I delete the odd diagonals, the bottom face disappears, and won’t close properly just by drawing a line across it.

However, when I push-pull the top central face down using Ctrl+P to duplicate the face, I get a face again on the bottom, but it doesn’t make a Solid Group again according to the Entity Inspector.

Also, you have a fair number of redundant lines running top to bottom along several edges. They won’t stop it being solid, but they do indicate the possibility that your modelling wasn’t quite ‘clean’ and may explain why the bottom face doesn’t quite connect at all its corners.

Can I do anything to fix it, or will I have to completely redo it?
Also, thank you for replying!

Also, you have redundant internal faces here:

which may prevent it printing properly.

I’m trying to clean it up a bit. But it would probably be easier to erase all the vertical lines and upper surface, make sure bottom outline is just that - an outline which has just one face - and pushpull it up from that.

Like this:

Key shape in plane.skp (25.6 KB)

Pushpull that up to the height you want.

And I see from other posts on the forum that all the 3D Printing template does is bloat the file - compare 26KB with 1.3MB - and add a not very necessary box showing the limits of one particular printer.

Try printing just from your extruded version of this.

PS. By the way, ‘to erase all the vertical lines and upper surface’ change to parallel projection (menu Camera/Parallel projection) choose Front view and do a right-to-left selection to get everything except the bottom plane.

Then go round and delete all the internal lines from the outline. That may well delete the face. To get it back, draw a line inside almost anywhere to recreate the face, then delete that line.

Thank you so much! I will do what you have suggested to me. This will be EXTREMELY helpful, and i’ll get my project done. Again, thanks!!!

You are welcome. Hope the printing goes well.

Your form is near the limit of SketchUp’s tolerances.
1/1000"
Some of the curved forms do have tiny edges.
There are also some overlapping facets and the main surfaces are not perfectly flat.
To get a flat face to work with I’d make a big flat rectangle face, group it and move that so it cuts through the faulty form.
Locate it about halfway up the form.
Then edit the rectangle-group and select the face > context-menu > intersect with model.
You now have a cut through the form.
Edit that group and delete the original rectangle’s edges to leave a ‘profile’ face for an extrusion in the forthcoming steps…
Delete the faulty geometry [except for perhaps one vertical edge which remembers the form’s ‘height’].
Explode the intersected face group.
Move that ‘profile’ face back to the base-level and then PushPull it back to the former height.
Now you have a perfect manifold solid…


INeedHelpPlease[TIG].skp (1.1 MB)
Please learn how to do this yourself…

TIG’s advice is very sound. Draw on a flat (grouped) rectangle to start with, and make sure all the outline points are ‘on Face’ as you draw them, and you will avoid many of these problems from the beginning. Watch your ‘inference point’ indications as you go, too, to make sure you don’t leave tiny gaps.

And maybe start next time drawing at a bigger real size, then scale down, to avoid Sketchup’s problem with small edges on curves.

Sorry, I just started SketchUp a day ago. Is there any source of information where I can learn about sketchup nono’s and how to use it properly?

See this for a start:

Also, if you prefer video to text, search YouTube for Sketchup Tutorials. Some are quite old, but there’s only one new tool (in SU 2016 - Rotated Rectangle) in recent years so most are still relevant, though the toolbar appearance has changed between versions.

And inferencing has improved considerably too.

5 posts were split to a new topic: Need help with a model for 3d printing