I am working on a badge for a hockey team where I am essentially trying to put the plane on the left with the circle on the right (the wings will overhang the circle). I am going to print this as a medallion that the kids can wear like a necklace. Based on the second photo the plane is higher off the canvas for some reason. I have tried pasting and moving the plane to the circle but it does not want to join them together. What do I need to do here?
Sorry, it did not let me post the second image that shows the two objects on different planes.
Sketchup is a native 3D environment, everything occupies some position in three dimensional space, so there are no “layers” in terms of presenting things on top of or below each other.
Download your file to your computer using the menu in the upper left of the screen, choose download and .skp. Then drag and drop your file into a response here on the forum so we can see what you are working with.
Warthogs 2.skp (341.8 KB)
Hopefully, I did that right! New to all this. Thank you!
You did that right, looking at your file now.
I don’t have a problem placing the plane onto the target circle. My guess is that you are grabbing the plane with the move tool from the center in which case SketchUp tries to keep the object on its original plane. Try grabbing the plan from one of the corners of the bounding box and then inference any edge or surface in the target. you will know you got it right because you sill see Z-fighting, a shimmering as the graphics card shows you both surfaces occupying the same plane in space.
Other than that you look set up to give these shapes some thickness with push-pull and 3d print.
Wow, that worked! Thank you so much! Is the shimmer something to be concerned about or is there a way to get rid of it?
It sounds a bit like you are using SketchUP like a 2d image editor, which is not how it works. The shimmering (Z-fighting) is common to all 3D modelers, it indicates that the two surfaces are occupying the same place in space, the graphics card rendering the image cannot decide which one to put on top because they are in the same plane so it show you both alternately. If you want one object above another you need to give both objects some thickness. I’m assuming the background target shape of the medallion has some thickness? And the airplane as well you need to push pull the surfaces up to give it thickness so this can be a 3 dimensional object for 3D printing. You are 3D printing this object, right?
What is your ultimate goal with this?
The background target which is the circle is going to be 1/2’ thick. The wings that overhang the circle will also be a half inch. I have a multicolor AMS system on my 3d printer so I am going to print the color of the image on the first couple of layers so the top of the model will be flat.
It is going to be like a medallion that the kids can wear as a necklace. It is a little gift that they will get for a tournament that is coming up.
You have a lot of work to do to make your model 3D so that it is printable. As it is at the moment there is nothing of the airplane to print.
What is the overall width and height of this thing supposed to be? Currently it’s more than 12 feet in both directions.
My printer has 2 AMS systems so I can print 8 different colors in one layer. Only the top couple of layers will have the color of the plane.
To get a usable .stl file from SketchUp you’ll need to make the model 3D and the objects need to be identified as solid.
It’s going to be about 4” in diameter. I scaled it up as I read to do that to avoid getting errors when maki no curved surfaces.
So the whole design is going to be 1/2” in thickness when I print it. I am not sure what you mean by a solid object. This is my first time doing my own design so I am learning as I go.
I understood that but you’ve modeled the thing so that it’s more than 12 FEET across. Do you have a printer that can print something that large? And how are the kids going to wear a medallion that is 12 feet wide and 12 feet tall?
A solid object in SketchUp is one in which every edge is shared by exactly 2 faces. The A10 in your model as you upload it has no thickness whatsoever. It is not a solid and it is not 3D printable.
Here I’ve redrawn the circular part such that it would be about 3 inches across. I’ve given the airplane thickness so it is a solid and would print at 1/2 in. thick. My 3D printer won’t do multiple colors so I made a little relief to the .stl so the slicer would show it.
I think you need to learn more about creating 3D models in SketchUp. Start with the tutorials at learn.sketchup.com
The medallion is going to be 4” in diameter and 1/2” tall when I am done and reduce the scaling.
