Lightsaber Model-----Sketchup to Cura....Major issues for a student of mine---Help!?

[forrestt 0]

Hi, all!

I'm a librarian with a school makerspace. I know enough about modeling and 3D printing to get simple things printed. Most of my students work in Tinkercad, so we have no issues typically.

One of my students learned Sketchup on his own (or so he thought), and made a beautiful looking model of Darth Vader's lightsaber(when viewed in sketchup). However, in Layer View in Cura, it is a mess (missing everything, essentially).

The saber is split into two so we could print it large enough. You'll see there's a spot where the two ends should interlock.

Can anyone take a look, see what's wrong, and maybe offer a solution? I'm hoping to help this kid (he's only 12), but I'm way out of my depth....

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B57onlU8yWYWVXZ3QzJzVWl4aTg

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B57onlU8yWYWblN3NHBRRTBKaEU

[gr5 1,071]

Well there is this great guide on fixing your sketchup models to be 3d printable:

https://i.materialise.com/blog/3d-printing-with-sketchup/

He may be only 12 but he's come so far - with some encouragement maybe he'll fix the model himself.

Also there are some services that will repair a mesh. I keep losing track of them as they come and go. I think this netfabb service might be good - never tried it - others said it's great:

https://service.netfabb.com/login.php

I think it's going to want your facebook and then it might start sending you emails about netfabb. That's the price to pay for free services I suppose.

[gr5 1,071]

Oh - one more thing - cura has some "fix horrible" settings - if you play with those you might be able to get it to print the STL as is. Of course check in layer view to see what those are doing. This fix horrible is not as fancy as what netfabb and other services can do for you.

[rowiac 48]

In addition to the suggestions by @gr5, he can install the Solid Inspector plugin for Sketchup which will help identify issues with the model so he can fix them in Sketchup prior to exporting an STL file.

Unfortunately Sketchup is not the best modeler for 3D printing for exactly the reason the kid discovered. You usually can, however, correct the issues with some patience and export a usable "watertight" model.