What's up with my faces (SketchUp .obj export)?

Good Morning!

I’m having a bit of an amateur moment because, well, in this case I’m an amateur: exporting for 3D printing.

I bought a 3D printer (finally) and decided it’d be fun to print a floorplan. Simple enough: a solid object with square edges, right?..not really.

So here is my model in SketchUp Pro (Studio) 2023:

and here is the exported .obj model, showing that the faces really aren’t as equal when they were exported…so, whats up?

An OBJ file needs triangulated faces, so complex faces like your walls [with holes etc] get diagonals added to achieve this…
Any ‘square corners’ should be respected, although the flat faces will get some planar subdivisions…
Why not export to STL which seems the more common 3dPrinting format ?
Note that this format triangulates faces too…

2 Likes