Only exporting exterior faces into Cura

[KateE 0]

I’ve exported this model into Cura, but it seems to only be seeing the external faces.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
I’m a beginner with cura so please be patient with me. Thanks.

 

CFFFP_usb holder.gcode

Edited May 7, 2019 by KateE

[gr5 2,167]

The short answer is that in sketchup by default walls are white on the outside and gray on the inside.  Right click on any visible gray walls and select "reverse faces" until all faces are white.

 

The longer answer is here - and I really recommend you read this if you will be using sketchup a lot:

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

 

It's a *very* easy read.  A quick read.  #9 is probably your issue but it could be one of the other sketchup gotchas.

 

Sketchup is designed for architectural models and although it can do almost anything it doesn't do solid real-world parts/prints as well.  If you are still new to sketchup then you might want to skip to a different cad package.  This is an incredibly simple and spot on guide for picking a good cad:

https://www.gliffy.com/go/publish/5271448

 

 

[KateE 0]

I cant upload my sketchup file here, but all the faces are white. And im 99.99% sure ive done everything else there to make the model printable.

 

I also just downloaded a model from thingiverse and the same thing was happening, its as if it cant see anything from a different angle than directly at the side.

 

you can see in the solid view how it's meant to look. But, you can see how its cutting out bits in the layer view.

[gr5 2,167]

Oh!!!  You should have shown a photo originally, lol.

 

The problem here is that your wall is too thin for one of the hexagons.  You have lots of options.

 

You could thicken the walls in sketchup (recommended).  You could check the box "print thin walls". If "print thin walls" isn't good enough you could also tell cura to print with a smaller line width (what kind of printer do you have?)  For example a 0.4mm nozzle usually prints "okay" down to around 0.3mm.  The quality slowly goes down.

 

You could also buy a smaller nozzle.  I sell nozzles for 90% of printers out there including all Ultimaker printers down to 0.1mm nozzles.  0.25mm nozzles are great for small prints that need finer details.

 

But your best option is to make the walls of that hexagon 0.8mm thick as a minimum.  And check "print thin walls".

[KateE 0]

I thought that might have been the problem, so i doubled the walls from 2mm to 4mm. The nozzle in 0.4mm. But its only recognizing the exterior face rather than the mass of the wall.

 

[geert_2 557]

If the model is designed in SketchUp, probably its walls are no solid walls, but rather a sort of "folded paper" models with gaps where the walls are glued together. Just like any paper model we glued as kids. Instead of a solid model, it is a bunch of surfaces that don't fit properly, so it is not a solid, and not watertight.

 

You also see this problem when drawing text in SketchUp: some characters do not close. These gaps may be very hard to see, and you may need to zoom in quite a lot. One solutions is to manually and carefully select each vector and each edge, and carefully align and close the gaps.

 

Another solution is to use a good 3D-editor that was designed for modeling solids. I use DesignSpark Mechanical, distributed by RS-components. This is a free but limited version of the commercial SpaceClaim. I have made many hundreds of models with it, and never had any problems.

 

See these SketchUp text-samples (you may need to zoom in):

 

 

 

 

Edited May 9, 2019 by geert_2

[KateE 0]

the model was put through a solid inspector, I know for sure it's watertight.

 

We just tried the same model on a different computer, and it worked fine in their version. So, that would lead me to believe its not the model that was made wrong, but some setting in Cura.