Sketchup to Cura to 3D Printing

[JesseTraw05 0]

I am 14 and new to 3d printing. I made a design through sketch, for a GoPro camera case. The case had five wholes, Camera, screen, power, record button,and light whole. When I put the STL file in cura it showed all five wholes. But it showed them in all but one view mode, the layer mode. The whole it did not show was the camera whole and that was the biggest. So when i went to print it, it only printed four wholes. Can someone help me find out why it is not printing the fifth whole, even though it is showing all five wholes?

-Jesse Traw

[nallath 1,118]

Because sketchup is very good at making rubbish 3D models. The software is intended to make 3d models that look good, which is can be quite different from a model that needs to be printed.

Have a look at the model in Cura when the x-ray view is active. If there are red area's in that view, the model is broken. If thats the case, the 3D model needs to be fixed.

[reemaj3D 1]

Just like what nallath said, Sketchup is bad at making printable models. Your best choice is to always check your models if they are printable before printing them. To fix them you can either manually fix them using http://www.meshlab.net/ or use an automatic repair service such as MakePrintable or meshmixer

[aggertroll 12]

Jesse, stick with Sketchup for the moment - I have been using it for modelling and it is quite ok.

I assume you merged your object into a group before exporting as stl file. In Sketchup, select the grouped object, open Window: Entity info: Does it tell you "Group" or "Solid group" up top? If it does not say "Solid", then the object is not watertight- it has a hole somewhere and that confuses the slicer (Cura). There is a nice Sketchup extension "Solid inspector" which shows you the hole so you can close it. Also, Cura will show you any problem area in x-ray view, as mentioned by nallath.

Hope this helps, and good luck with your print.

Thomas

[gr5 2,094]

Furthermore - there is a feature in cura in the "repair model" section or advanced section or something like that which can fill in holes sometimes made in sketchup.  You can unselect that.  Or fix the model by making sure all surfaces in sketchup are "outside" and not "inside".  If you use the default gray/white two color surface make sure all the white is on the outside and gray on the inside in the region of the hole that is filled in (around the edges of that hole).

In sketchup you can right click on a surface and reverse the faces.

Keep in mind that with "real" cad software you don't have to tell it what is inside and what is outside.

Edited January 8, 2017 by Guest

[tomnagel 123]

You can use a tool in Sketchup for model checking. See https://ultimaker.com/en/community/35941-cura-layers-slices-dont-match-normal-view-mode#reply-168428

Edited January 10, 2017 by Guest

[rowiac 53]

Jesse,

Here is a pretty good basic article on dealing with Sketchup models for 3D printing.

3d-printing-with-sketchup/

I mostly don't use Sketchup because of the problems it creates in the models, but it is very easy to use for some things such as square edged shapes.

[DidierKlein 729]

Being a student i would advise you to check out Autodesk Fusion 360 it's a lot more powerfull and works well for 3d printing and for students and hobbyists it's free

Lot's of youtube tutorials and it's quite easy to get your hands on, nothing that a 14 years old interested in technology could be afraid off