Problem with orienting faces

hi. I have been working on a model for the past 8 months. I’m close to finishing it but realised fairly recently that a lot of my faces are reversed. there are almost 40000 faces total and 110000 edges. this is being made for my school and I can’t find a way to fix the issues. there’s no way I could go through everything and check although fortunately a lot of the faces are parts of components I have used repeatedly. if anyone can help Ibuilding1_2018.skp (1.5 MB)
would be very very grateful.

Usually it’s a pretty simple task to identify and reverse faces, and it looks like you’ve got a good start by making them appear as bright red. Normally I would be able to choose “orient faces” after selecting a good face, but in your model this causes chaos because some objects aren’t closed. Going through your file, I noticed that a lot of your modeling includes objects that aren’t entirely “closed,” which makes SketchUp a bit confused about what is outside and what is inside. Please go through groups that have a lot of bad faces and ensure there are no open ends or stray lines that aren’t necessary. Tighten it up, and group up elements that are still ungrouped. Then, go through and start to “orient faces” to an outward facing one, which should start tightening it up. It seems like you don’t have a ton to do. Good news again is that if you fix one component, all the other instances of it will be fixed as well. Take your time, you should be done in no time.

I’m going to try this. I still have about a month’s worth work left on this model plus rendering to finish the detail required.

there is a plugin, not sure if you can get it to work in make? called “left click reverse tool” which while it wont make it automatic, it is a lot easier to use as it doesn’t require 2 clicks and it sees through groups and components so you don’t have to open everything.

i cant find such an extension

a google search would find it.

I know it is working in 2018, haven’t tried in 2019 yet.

the plugin is the wrong format

i am just going through as per the previous suggestion. this is working well when coupled with solid inspector.

unfortunately i found that there are some issues with the most intricate of my groups not related. if anyone can figure out why i cant close up the back and bottom i would be grateful
side room window.skp (1.2 MB)

you can just drop the .rb file in your plugins folder, it doesnt install like rbz does through the extension wharehouse, but it will work.

I don’t want the plugin. The first solution works so far except the second model I posted.

It can be a real time saver! see red, click on it.

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It looks better than I thought it was. I’ll try it. Any idea on the second problem?

Not sure what your second problem is… If its component related, the left click reverse tool works without having to open components first ( kinda like thru paint)

Also note that some faces around the central dock are single faces…i.e they have a front and back face, so there will always be a back face on display. I would suggest push/pulling those to give them a “real world thickness” maybe 1/2" and then you can have front faces on either side.

Took a look at your window model. It appears that some lines are off axis by a minute amount. Easiest fix was to redraw the window. Used three cutting planes to get the profiles of the side, top and bottom. Made an extrusion of each profile in their own group. Adjusted the length of each to match the original model. Exploded and ran intersect and there you have it.
Not sure how you wanted to “close up” the back, but after the redraw had no problem boxing things in. Took maybe an hour to redraw.

Thank you very very much. I ended up adjusting and adjusting for a few hours and sorted it out. I ended up having to go in to the building and copying measurements straight on to my model.

Also, depending on your rendering style (clay in this case), it may not matter if faces are reversed
Although a good habit to get into.

Wow. What program did you use? I have a bunch of custom materials I’m going to apply to the building. Basically the project is to make a detailed technical model of the building and to make an animation to showcase it for the website. I was approached because I have sketchup and like this sort of stuff. Any suggestions?