Sketchup .stl opened with cura 14. Why the extra material?

[Carlitos_omg28 0]

Ok so I created a file in sketchup with 2 wholes in the walls and Saved as .stl then opened it in cura ver 14 but it looks good when opened. But gives unwanted material when sliced and printed. It joins the two wholes, dont know why. It shows up in layer view, not normal view. I'm printing in draft mode .04 walls. Also side note. In cure I save in inches but when transferred over to cura, it shrinks the model tiny into mm. -2000%size

[gr5 1,058]

lol.  Okay.

 

I'm surprised it printed anything at all.

 

Sketchup can allow you to sketch infinitely thin walls.  Infinitely thin walls when converted to real life (3d printed) are - well infinitely thin and occupy no space and are kind of the opposite of solid.  Normal cad software - that for making true 3d objects - won't let you do this.  So sketchup is difficult to use but here goes...

 

You need to specify in sketchup how thick you want your walls.  And please pick something at least double the width of your nozzle or cura won't be happy.  So you need to place more walls around your box and you need to put holes in it in front of the existing walls and connect them with a cylinder (even if the cylinder is only 1mm long).

 

For example if you want a cube you only need 6 walls in sketchup to make a cube.  If you want a box with no top, you need the same 5 outer surfaces, plus 5 inner surfaces, plus 4 surfaces around the top edge to connect these all together.

 

Is that any more clear?

 

Here is a nice article about 3d printing and sketchup.

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

[gr5 1,058]

Oh.  And *ALWAYS* look at your part in cura in layer view as you would have realized that you aren't getting what you thought and you wouldn't have wasted any time and plastic on the printing step.

 

[Carlitos_omg28 0]

Great tip! I made my walls 1.5mm thick in the sketchup program, Bingo! Came out perfect! Thanks. I also set my object measurements to mm not inches in sketchup. No more sizing issues. 😁