Like many of the folks who have posted on this, I’m banging my head against a wall trying to track down a surface border issue. What makes mine even more irritating is that it’s a 2-dimensional object. I worked so far backwards that now when I create a triangle (by using the polygon tool, set to 3 sides) and then inspect it, I get the surface border issue.
How can I create a triangle without that issue?
Share your SketchUp model file so we can see what you’ve got. How are you seeing the “surface border” issue? The only way I’m aware of seeing that message is with Solid Inspector 2. It will most definitely give that message if you have a 2D group or component. In order to be considered a solid every edge in the object must be shared by exactly two faces. No fewer and no more. The bounding edges of a single face on its own will not be shared by two faces.
Expanding on what @DaveR wrote, you are seeing the result of applying a solid integrity test to your non-solid object. The surface border report is probably confusing you because you don’t quite get what a SketchUp solid is.
SketchUp solids are meant to be the surface of an air-tight volume in model space, such as would be the surface of an actual solid object. Your 2D object encloses no volume, hence it can’t be a solid. Surface borders are one diagnostic for why a particular object fails to be a solid. They are places where the surface ends without continuing onto another face, that is, edges of holes in the surface. Holes mean there is no difference between the interior and the exterior of the object. In your 2D case, the hole is the entire rest of the model.
Drawing in Sketchup.skp (116.4 KB)
Oh man, I can’t believe anyone responded to this!
My model was literally just “create a triangle and inspect it” to figure out what I’ve been doing wrong in my larger project. What you’re saying makes sense about solids really being about 3-dimensions.
Giving more context here will be helpful. What I’m actually trying to do is to create a line drawing in Sketchup that I can export as an svg to my Shaper Origin (a handheld cnc machine) for a design that I want to carve onto a furniture piece that I modeled in Sketchup. So my hope was to be able to export a sort of “line drawing” in svg.
I’ve attached what I’m actually trying to make.
This makes sense. Tbh - I’m blown away that three competent people responded to me. This makes me feel so much better about using Sketchup!
Is this what you want to do? break it down to the a simple repetition, array it and clean up the outside edge to what you want.
If you test this with solid inspector it will still tell you it has a surface border, because that is what the outside edge it to SI, it reads as the edge of a hole. Solid inspector is not a tool for 2d.
If this isn’t what you are trying to do you need to explain more.
Wow, I am blown away by the Sketchup community.
This isn’t a fix for what I want, which is just to export the line drawing into .svg. But I get that Sketchup is probably the wrong tool for what I want.
Thanks so much for taking a look here, I think I just need to learn a new modeling software for drawing in 2d, at least for creating carving imagines that I’d load into my cnc.
There are svg exporters, but if you just want to draw in 2d you are better off in other software designed to do that. Look at software for sign making etc Lightburn, Sillouette, Easy cut and so on. Can’t remember if Inkscape has .svg direct export, gimp is another.
There are loads of options out there.
But, Eneroth’s SVG exporter gives me this when opened in lightburn.
If you don’t need 3d look at the options Box listed and also try Affinity Designer. Far cheaper than SKP and has native SVG export (along with lots of other formats). I used it to do laser cutting back when I dabbled at a local maker space.
