Working with mdf parts and sheets using Opencutlist, some times a piece is imported with “~” simbol (aproximated thichness). Inside opencutlist there is option to quick chage dimensions (height and width). There’s a way to quick change thickness of a piece (or a set) on Opencutlist?
The tilde (~) indicates you’ve not modeled the components as accurately as you should have. I would suggest going into the model and fixing the object so you don’t get the ~ with the dimension. Also inspect the model to ensure that imprecision in that part hasn’t carried through in the rest of the model.
BTW, what version of SketchUp are you using? There is no 2023 Free Plan like you put in your forum profile.
Yes, I understand this point of precision in the part, but I’m looking for a way to quickly change the thickness using an opencutlist tool, like the option to quickly change the height and width. My projects always have many parts and manually changing thicknesses one by one is difficult…
Thanks for pointing out the sketchup version issue, it’s true, I clicked on something wrong, I’ll correct that…
So you don’t want to fix the model, you just want to ignore the ~ in the cut list?
No, OpenCutList is mainly a reader. It doesn’t touch the part geometry.
In general what you need could be as dangerous as complex to implement. OCL, like other cut list program extract part size from their bounding box. And even if the bounding box is always a perfect box, the true part geometry can be a cube as a cloud of points without a real “thickness”.
It dangerous, because changing the size of the bounding box will produce the same deformation as a scale and it’s complex, because solving the thickness problem without creating a other geometric problem is quit impossible.
For accuracy reasons OpenCutList uses internally .000 minimal precision to compute part size. So yes even if you change the SketchUp precision to 0, the ~ won’t disappear.
I understand your discomfort in editing all the poorly drawn parts one by one, but ignoring this lack of precision would inevitably cause problems in the advanced features of OpenCutList or SketchUp in general.
Requiring the user to have a precise drawing is the best way to solve everything.
I take some times cabinets from external source, and 90% of the parts has correct thickness, but 10% has 15,3mm instead 15mm for example and i need to correct one by one. But i got it. Thank you Boris.
one option is to set up another material entry in OCL for the 15,3mm thickness.
But i need optimize all parts on cutting plan of mdf sheet, set up another material will not work for nesting.
Sounds to me as if your best solution is to fix the model so it isn’t sloppy.
It is many different models of cabinets, many times custom. It’s basically impossible pre fix them. Anyways, there’s any plugin that show the 3 dimensions of a component and a option to choose one to change (setting the measure)? It would work for me…
But if you change the thickness of cabinet sides, you have to update length all other connected parts. I’m not sur that it could be easily automated.
Based on that I think your modeling workflow needs a revision. There’s absolutely no reason why you can’t have precisely dimensioned objects in your model. You should not need to be searching for non-existent extensions to magically fix your models.
Use the cutlist to identify those components that need to be repaired and Outliner to quickly find them so you can edit them and correct the dimensions.
I’m having the same problem, and finding it impossible to recreate perfect geometry for OpenCutlist. SketchUp does not show the ~ mark on my geometry… but OCL still sees some 0.00001 discrepancies. I’ve been recreating the same parts for hours with no luck.
Share the file so we can see what you’ve got.
Kara fireplace surround (final).skp (9.8 MB)
I saved the file with the “mantle bedmold face” in view. It should be 1/2 inch but in OCL it shows as 0.500047 inches.
Well, you’ve got some issues with the component that can be seen in the way the bounding box doesn’t fit the geometry correctly. There should be no gaps between the bounding box and the geometry.
OCL is reporting the dimensions correctly based on the precision. This is what I see for that component. I expect the length and width are not what you intend.
Part of your problem is that you have rather coarse display precision set (that would prevent the small discrepancies from showing when you add dimensions in the model) and you have Length Snapping enabled which tends to aid in making imprecise models.
Another issue that is involved here is that you’ve moved the model axes and have them oriented incorrectly. Solid blue should be pointing up. I expect you’ve got the axes oriented lightly off the default axis orientation.
After resetting the axes you can see that your model is placed away from the origin. It’s a good idea to keep the model at the origin.
What are the real dimensions of the component supposed to be?
After resetting the axes, I redrew the part using the closest sensible dimensions. Not sure if they are the dimensions you really want but the thing is 1/2 in. thick now.
Here’s the model after redrawing that component with the dimensions as shown. I think you’ll need to fix some of the associated components but you’ll need to go through the model and first correct the axis orientations for the components.
Kara fireplace surround.skp (9.1 MB)
BTW, I fixed incorrect tag usage. All edges and faces should be created and remain untagged.
And I purged unused content from the model.
I just found another issue in your model that would affect the dimensions. You’ve been using Scale to resize them. There are components that need to have the scale of their definitions updated.
Thanks Dave.
I recreated the component as well after seeing the bounding box issue. Its now at 1/2 inch.
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How do you get that dimensions box to show up?
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I also changed the display precision to 0.000000”. Will this help? Will it help length snapping be more precise?
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Are you saying that my bounding boxes may have been slightly off because of my default axis orientation?
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What do you mean the “scale of their dimensions” needs updating? Is there a better way to resize objects instead of the scale tool?
I use an old plugin that unfortunately the author removed from circulation.
It will help you see poential errors. You should have Length Snapping turned OFF if you want to do precise modeling.
That’s part of the issue. You should be using the default axis location and orientation. The bounding boxes are created to align with the axes in the context in which you are modeling. If you have the axes slightly canted that can affect the bounding boxes and it’s the blounding box dimensions that are reported by OCL not the geometry inside.
You have apparently been scaling components and groups in the model to adjust their dimensions. I find for woodworking types of projects scaling is rarely the best option for resizing objects but if you use it you have to remember to scale the definition of the components. That scale doesn’t get updated if you are scaling the component. Better, if you must use Scale, would be to open the component for editing and scale the geometry instead.
I generally find using Move or Push/Pull to be better options for resizing the geometry in an object. Here’s a comparison between using Scale and Move to take 2 inches off the overall length of the component in questions. First, with Scale, note that the wide notch is not reduced by two inches.
Here, using Move to shorten the entire piece by 2 inches also shortens the notch by two inches.
BTW, here’s a cutlist of all the parts in your model You can see that a lot of them appear to need attention.
Mantle Cutlist.pdf (192.8 KB)
It might be that you could round many of those dimensions and ignore the those oddballs but it also might be that ignoring some of them might adversely affect other part of the project. You know the overall project better than I do. Maybe you can manage with the imprecision just fine. I’m OCD enough that I wouldn’t leave them like that and would go back and remake the model with all the dimensions exactly as they need to be.