Sketchup make 3d printing pro#

I’m sure that 3d solid merging algorithms are not easy to get right, but if my CAD software can’t do it then it is not suited to 3d printing. Of course I couldn’t move the pieces because I never understood how the components and groups worked with respect to solids, so I had to go to a previous saved version where they were separate solids, move these(save new version for later edits), unionise them again and spend ages joining the dots again. To make it worse, if you then had to move the positions of one of the pieces, you would most likely have to do it all again. There were often between 20 and 100 micro alterations to be done on any merged surfaces. The standard solution is to download a plugin which highlights these flaws, and laboriously go in and join the dots. Putting two solids together, which were in any way a bit more complex (curves, chamfers, slopes, splines, arcs) and you would invariably have holes and hidden faces, which would then stop this new construction from being regarded as a solid.

I never really got the hang of them, but with more time I may have.īut the thing that was a show stopper was the solids. If you want to stay up to date with all things related to 3D printing, make sure to check out All3DP’s website here. It seemed difficult to group solids, into a new solid, without making a union, which then made it impossible to go back and move a piece of the construction. It’s time to create your first 3D model in SketchUp yourself, and we hope you enjoyed this tutorial by All3DP’s SketchUp expert Mich Judelag. Groups and components didn’t work particularly intuitively or well. The chamfering and fileting was also a bit fiddly, but could almost always be done with a bit of patience. To do precision work was a bit fiddly, but I got there eventually.

Sketchup make 3d printing pro#

They are complete, but very expensive with antiquated controls, and often an overkill for my relatively simple 3d printing needs.Įagerly I downloaded sketchup with the pro trial, to allow “solids”.

I have been looking for a good alternative to the autodesk products.