I export the result to STL, setting the Options for units to Metres.
When I re-import the STL file to a new SU model, it is no longer solid - 5 surface border problems (and a few stray lines which I removed before this screenshot).
My Cura slicer won’t recognise it as printable - Layer view shows that nothing will print.
Any suggestions for how to fix this?
I used the same process to draw one earlier, but found it wasn’t quite the right outside diameter, but I haven’t been able to recreate with the correct diameter as an STL solid.
Why the STL export fails to produce a solid - a bug? Small edges when imported back in mm?
Quite how you fixed it.
Something weird is now happening when I export the throat.skp to STL, and set the units to mm. throat.stl (110.6 KB)
All I get when I load the resulting throat.stl file into Cura is an annulus, 2280mm outside diameter!
Scaled to the correct size (68.5mm diameter, 5mm thick, it looks likes this on the build plate, and furthermore ends up only 45.6mm diam:
And it still won’t slice to show any printable layers in Cura.
Grey doesn’t print. Printable layers would be red or yellow (mostly).
Weirder and weirder.
I wonder if a restart of my computer might fix some of these glitches?
I DID succeed in printing one that worked, except for being a little oversize, a couple of days ago. But not now, and I’ve redrawn it three times from scratch in SketchUp to try and get it right. All solid in SU, not solid and not printable when exported to STL.
Sorry, i thought I had, but when I look back I see it was only the STL file.
Here’s a very slightly modified SU file, scaled with metres for mm, and saved back to SU2017 (but drawn in SU2022). Bandsaw zero clearance throat plate.skp (169.0 KB)
I only opened your .skp file and exported a .stl file. i.materialise has no problem with it. I exported with units set to meters and uploaded with units set to millimeters.
Many thanks for your help again, Dave. Always appreciated. Have to do other things for a while, but will try to print first my most recent export after restart, and yours, Dave, if mine doesn’t work.
When I import either my most recent export, or your STL file, Dave, back into SU to view it, Solid Inspector 2 still says there are stray edges and 5 surface border issues.
So it looks as if we’re getting the same results in the STL file. Maybe I shouldn’t worry about the non-solid STL import back into SU?
And Cura still shows only grey not red and yellow layers after slicing. But that’s on my iMac, and not connected to my printer. I’ll try it on the Windows computer connected to the printer later this evening here in UK.
I guess I wouldn’t worry about importing it back into SketchUp either. And I would suspect Cura has some issue with the file, too. i.Materialise clearly didn’t.
Looking at the STL file makes me think that the STL exporter perhaps has a less than ideal way of triangulating the surfaces. There are some very long and thin triangles where some of the faces refuse to form when the file is re-imported.
