Interesting treatise! I would like an explanation of what you mean when you say that SU does not make printable objects, but “organic shapes” ? I don’t know what an organic shape is. It sounds like you’re takling about carrots. In this thread on 10/20, TDahl indicated that SU “is” suitable for 3-D printing. Why do you think that he is not accurate in this? What modeling technique do you use?What I am modeling are parts of houses, that is walls w/doors and windows, corner treatments at the wall intersections, chimney representations, roof structures w/dormers and roofing representations; all of which are basically made up of flat surfaces in a closed geometry. These are not figures or characters. Respectfully submitted, Clay
I believe what is being referred to as an organic shape is something that is alive…people, trees, plants and yes carrots.
You may have read that in reverse. It was meant to say that SketchUp has no problems making printable objects, but does have trouble making organic shapes, as you might want to do when 3D printing figurines for example.
Here is a recent discussion on organic modeling:
true but not limited to wetware only, things like a computer mouse or a car headlight or a cushion can be made of organically formed surfaces too.
in general; ‘watertight’ solids required for 3D priting can be made by a solid modeler (SU is polygon modeling) easier because solids are ‘watertight’ by design, i.e. you don’t have to fiddle around with holes or orphaned edges/faces or intersecting entities etc.
I did not say, “SU does NOT make printable shapes”, I used a double negative. SU DOES make printable shapes, but making shapes with irregular, compound curves is difficult with native SU. You often have to rely on plugins and add-ons to increase its power. Even then, it’s still not designed for that. It works much better on geometric shapes as found in architecture. Other programs exist, such as Blender, which have been designed with irregular curved objects from the get go. These programs, at least for me, are not as easy to learn. I have done 3D prints with compound curves, but as I said, it wasn’t easy and required plugins. The Follow-Me tool can produce these shapes too.
FWIW, here are a few (very few) objects I’ve modeled entirely in SketchUp that are 3D printable. Anyone who tries to tell you that SketchUp is not suitable for 3D Printing doesn’t know what they are talking about.
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Thank you, Dave. As you point out iff one knows how to create a solid model, the result should successful. I’m just learning about doing this, and am getting ready to test a half dozen models to see if I’m on track. You probably know people who don’t read assembly plans, ‘cause they know it all… well I’m one and I taught myself SU. Well, I’m going through the SU tutorials andantes now making progress.
Clay , Don’t get discouraged in your travels with learning SketchUp. Totally agree with DaveR on this subject. If you have the desire you CAN learn to do it. Dave is one of the true SU masters , particularly with woodworking and his wonderful mechanical bits. Thought I’d post a pic of what is definitely an organic SU model. Done entirely in SU some years back for a museum job I was working on ( the job was my reason for learning Sketchup). Never have done any 3D printing but out of curiosity exported an .stl file of the model and downloaded to the i_materialize site. They will print me a 1/4 scale copy of the model for a paltry $ 1500.00. 
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Lovely carving though!
You can go back and edit your post to remove all but one of the images.
In the editing panel the reference to each image starts with 
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Hi, again ! I just came across another question for my go-to-experts ! I’m still modeling the walls (etc) for my houses. In each house, the two long walls will require the printer to print an area where a strip of 100% infill is necessary to install hardware (drawer slides) and strengthen the wall to sustain the stresses of the sliding drawer. The question is how should I prepare the model to let the printer know where the thicker infill is required?
Thats the task for the slicer. This software made gcode for the printer from the stl.file.
I have used this slicer: https://www.simplify3d.com/
It has a lot of options to optimize your gcode for printing.
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Thank you for that information. I have considered the Cura slicer, will this choice be able to similarly optimize the gcode?
from what i read about cura - yes cura does also provide the ability to adjust the printing parameter like infill or support.