Sketchup and 3d printing?

[catamountain]

General resources Resources.

In the old days, pre-Solid tools, we would just position separately modeled parts as needed (if the parts were groups/components they were exploded after being positioned), select the intersecting parts > r-click > Intersect. Delete the stuff you don’t need. As Box has shown with Section Cut, I’ve used Section Cut tool to peer inside my model to find extraneous junk inside models to clean up.

The boolean extensions came later, after strong user demand.

[Jeff]

@steve_auch

No, I don’t expect to learn any sufficiently powerful CAD package in < 20 hours, but you expect to get a good feel for it.

yeah, i agree with that…
i suppose the way i said the thing about 20hrs was too snarky.

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Lol… Did someone really change the name of the topic?

hmm… strange indeed… kinda sucks actually.
at the very least, whoever did that should leave a mod note in the top post or whatever… as well as point to the forum rules or other explanation of why exactly the title was edited.

(*wonders if this post will be edited or deleted since i said ‘sucks’)

[pcmoor]

@Jeff

(*wonders if this post will be edited or deleted since i said ‘sucks’)

Big “Bother” is watching your every move

[Wo3Dan]

@steve_auch

'm not sure. Perhaps it was designed and built for another purpose entirely, and doesn’t scale well to the small sizes required for most 3d printing applications? You’d think when you clicked the 3d printing template button on the startup screen, that it would scale all of it’s internals to work well at that scale, and perhaps limit the max size to make sure performance was still OK.

I do agree. We know for sure it was designed for a different purpose. And yes, I would love SketchUp to be able to handle small sizes better than it does now. But your previous topic name sounded “a bit” as if SketchUp wasn’t worth anything for 3D printing.
Others gave a workaround and I just wanted to point out that you should leave (or make by altering through context menu option) the larger instance hold the component definition, to get the aibility to really work with small sizes. Otherwise endpoints may merge much easier.
Yes, it’s a workaround and I do hope that in future SketchUp will deal with small dimensions internally.
Even better suited for 3D printing.
But even 3D printers do grow

added: Yes, who changed the name of the topic to something more friendly?
In fact, who can change topic names?
p.s. wasn’t me

[Anssi]

@catamountain

Some 3d printers are large enough to fit on a semi-trailer bed

Even larger

3D printers print ten houses in 24 hours

Anssi

[steve_auch]

@Wo3Dan

But even 3D printers do grow

And shrink… Think nano…

[goodwingavin]

Having read all the posts, I still am unsure if SketchUp is suitable for 3D printing. Could someone please advise if it is, and who I can contact for more information regarding the entire process from designing in sketchup to formatting it for 3D printing. I am a beginner 3D print learner so need some step by step guidance.

[catamountain]

Here’s a video of a gear train JIm made to give you an idea of something small-ish. Here’s a starter resource and the printers and printing services also have guidelines that work best for their equipment. The short answer, is yes, SU is suitable for 3D printing.

There’s also a new forum category for 3D printing.

[jim_foltz]

SketchUp is certainly capable of producing models for 3d printers. Whether sketchup is suitable depends on your specific application and expectations.

What do you plan on making and what type of printer will you use?