Spiral Staircase.skp (311.2 KB)
@JustinTSE
Hey devD, I recommend you start a new string with your Spiral Staircase.skp. Every model is usually a new skp. I looked at it and checked it out with Go Inspector. It had nested components. I copied some components and moved them a little down the red axis and they checked out as solid when separated from the group. I wonder what would hold the steps up. Are they fastened some way to a wall? I pushed a hole through the step to put the banister rail in but it would need threading and a nut to connect it to the stair I think. Anyway, if you start a new string with each model some of the experts can help you and answer questions.
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Hey @Royce, I am sorry but I am not able to catch what you are trying to say. Please explain it to me once again so that I can understand. Sorry to bother you.
Its a nice looking staircase. I checked it out with inspector. It has nested components. When you take it apart and anylze them separately, they are solid, though. Some of the experts and SU video lessons may be able to help you from making nested components. I have problems with nested components, too. When I look at the staircase, I always wonder how it connects to rest of a structure to stabalize it. What holds it together?
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Royce is right. In order for the stairs to be stable, a different structure is necessary, for example as shown below. Even if it’s just an exercise, it’s a good idea to create the correct models, it’s best to model the real things for the exercises.
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what does nested components mean?
When a group is made within a group or a component is made within another component, I think it considered “nested.” When I did searches inside Trimble, I did not find a definition, but the word is mentioned. Nesting causes problems for SU to interpret what you intend to show in your model and causes printing errors, I think. There are undoubtedly better explanations out there than I can give.
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A nested component is a component that contains components and/or groups. Here is an example. I have created a component for the entire spiral stair which contains a number of base components. The Step assembly component is also nested and contains the tread, spindles and other parts.
The nesting can make it easier to work with the elements in the model. For example if I wanted to replace the “Oval spindles” on the stairs I could do that very quickly and easily by editing just one of the Step assembly components.
No that’s not correct. Nested components can be 3D printed without any problem if the components/groups inside are modeled correctly. Here’s a chair model. The entire chair isa nested component, shown open for editing, containing a bunch of solid components.
After exporting the .stl and uploading it for printing.
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Can you explain when nesting becomes an error and gets picked up using Inspector, please?
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Only the lowest level components can be identified as solid. Nested components cannot. Solid Inspector can only look at one component at a time. The “nested” message provided by Solid Inspector is only an error message saying you’re not using it correctly because you’ve not selected a bottom level component. It does not mean there’d be any problem with 3D printing the object. As long as all of the bottom level components are solids, there’ll be no problem with 3D printing.
Ths is sort of similar to your concerns about Solid Inspector identifying short edges and that being a problem for 3D printing. The short edges aren’t a neccessarily a problem. It’s a warning that there could be a problem depending on what you do to the model later but by themselves the short edges message isn’t indicating a problem.
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Thank you, DaveR. So, do you use outliner to select a bottom level component? I’ve never used outliner, yet.
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One thing I often see in other peoples’ models is that a bunch of faces and edges has been made into a group or component, which then somehow has been managed to be made into a new group or component, et cetera. It just adds unnecessary levels of nesting.
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You can use Outliner to select components at any level in the model. Or you can just keep opening component containers until you get to the one you want.
@Anssi makes a good point. Sometimes nesting can be unnecessary and only creates more work for the user. Another common thing (which you had problems with early on) was nesting of loose geometry with components. That’s not good practice.
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Thank you Anssi and DaveR. I think that will answer the OP’s question much better.
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