Vcarve import - two lefts instead of a left and right

I know this may be a VCarve issue instead of a sketchup issue but you are all just so smart.

My cabinet sides are specific to either left or right. When I import to vcarve, SOMETIMES it gives me a left and a right side of the cabinet. SOMETIMES it gives me two lefts or two rights. I’ve tried leaving all my cabinets “in situ” in the model, I’ve tried laying all the parts out flat but that didn’t change anything.

Does anyone have any experience with this? Thoughts? Questions comments concerns? Thanks in advance.

I have no experience with VCarve, but I have heard that sometimes when a model is exported, it makes a difference how mirrored parts were generated. Evidently scale by -1 and flip along produce subtle differences in the object transformations that can confuse the exporters.

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Oh that’s very interesting - thanks! I create a new solid box from scratch, but I copy over shelf pin holes and biscuit slots. Nothing is ever mirrored, just copied, so I wouldn’t think this is a problem… but maybe…

That seems like a lot more work than you would need to…

What do you suggest?

Making components for identical pieces. (Mirrored pieces are identical)
That way you can model one side, make it a component, copy and flip or scale to -1 to get the other side. Much quicker than modelling every piece from scratch.
But there is more. If you have to make a change, you just change one instance of the component and all the others will change automatically!
Edit: and it will keep your filesize smaller too…

I had no idea that having components instead of solid groups kept the file size smaller! Thank you!

If you are getting this problem when importing your SketchUp file using the ‘import vectors’ function then my guess is you haven’t specified an option in the ‘orientate part’ field of the VCarve import dialogue. Upon import, VCarve will do a scan and determine the face of the part with largest area and place it ‘face up’. However, most parts will have two faces with identical area and thus, VCarve will randomly select one of the faces to be ‘face up’ on the z axis. Hence, you probably are importing both left and right parts but one is face down and so it looks as though they are the same part.

I have found a reliable way to ensure all parts are orientated correctly when brought into VCarve is to start in Sketchup. In your model, apply a specifically selected colour to only the ‘face up’ surface of each part/component. In the materials browser, rename the colour to something like ‘face up’. This ‘colour’ can be edited to be plain white if you so choose- the critical thing is it’s name. Here’s why…. Upon importing into VCarve, choose ‘material’ under the ‘orientate part by’ option. The colour you named ‘face up’ should be an option. Select it. All parts should import so that the painted face is up with respect to the z axis.

It would be good if VCarve respected the individual sketchup component axes in relation to orientating parts upon import but it does not. If it did, there would be no need to paint faces etc.

If you would like to read more about the idiosyncrasies of Vectric software and how it deals with Sketchup models, read my response in the following post:

Hope this helps

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Thank you, this does help. I had seen the option and thought that doing this would be too tedious, but it sounds like it’s at least worth a shot to try.

Yes, I remember avoiding this option for a long time too because it does seem tedious. However, If you want to get really tricky and refine the process, try this…

The attached screenshot shows a part which is not ‘painted’ with any colour or material. It contains only the default material. If you look though, the part contains a nested, simple 2D component made from flat text which reads ‘this face up’. It is actually this 2D text component which is painted with the relevant ‘face up’ colour, as described above. This 2D component is set to ‘glue to’ for easy placement and is assigned its own tag called ‘this_face_up_NOT_USED_IN_CAM’.

This is the way to go for a couple of reasons:

  1. You can simply copy and paste the ‘this face up’ component into all of your parts in the model. No deep diving into your panel parts to paint a single face.

  2. Once the model is imported into VCarve, a quick glance at all parts will confirm they are all orientated correctly - that is, I can read ‘this face up’ on each part and when satisfied I can delete the layer ‘this_face_up_NOT_USED_IN_CAM’, thus removing the text from the parts.

I’ve attached a Sketchup model as an example part. You may want to try importing this into VCarve yourself to see how it works. Also, feel free to strip it of all components for your own use - it contains the painted ‘this face up’ component.

VCarve_Part_Example.skp (200.0 KB)

Happy cutting.

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Wow excellent. I had to look up a quick video on gluing components, but then I figured it out and just shared this with my CNC operator. This will work pretty easily into our workflow and it definitely makes it faster and easier to ensure all our parts are face up. Thank you so much!

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