Solid and Shell in a pre-made model

SketchUp 3D Printing
1

Hi All,

I am new to this and would appreciate some help. My sister-in-law supplied me with a Sketchup model of a family member’s house on its landscape for me to print in 3D. I am quite new at doing 3D printing and I can not seem to get it right. It appears that the model is not solid and as such once exported as STL file, the slicing software goes haywire.

How do I make a model like this printable in Sketchup?DeVilliers-02forPrint.skp (339.9 KB)

2

From what I can see in your model, it is not solid. to print this, your first step is fixing the holes. Here is a screenshot of one that I found pretty quickly after opening it.

1300×880 71 KB

If I recall the solid inspector extension might be able to help you with this process. Here is a link: Extension | SketchUp Extension Warehouse

I will see if I can find any other problems with your file and try to find a fix for them.

I took a closer look at the model and some of the geometry is pretty rough and not lining up properly. This will cause some problems down the road for you. Is this the original file? If it is, a fair amount of cleanup will be needed to make it print ready. If it is a composite of multiple models, can you post those so I can see why things are not lining up the way that they should?

Something went wrong somewhere along the way when this model was being made. I am quite curious to see what exactly is causing this.

3

Thanks a lot for the reply. This is the original file and in my efforts to make it work I have noticed that the landscape and the actual house are two separate groups (see attached). I have installed solid inspector and it fixed lines etc. but it says there are two or three nesting objects, which I do not know anything about. If I export to STL after solid checker’s fix, it is better in the slicing software but it still shows geometry that should not be there.DeVilliers-02forPrint25.skp (345.2 KB)

4

It’s hard to do it all in SketchUp. Here’s an easy way.

1 - Explode all the groups
2 - Scale the model to the size you want to print (200mm on a side?)
3 - Export as an STL model. The model isn’t solid yet, but you will fix it in the next step.
4 - Upload the STL to https://modelrepair.azurewebsites.net/ and in a few minutes you can download the fixed model ready for printing.