Working with STL files in SketchUp for 3D printing

Matt Donley3D Printing, News

STL files are the most common file type for models designed for 3D printing. If you’re trying to work with STL files within SketchUp, you’ll find it challenging because all of the faces are subdivided and there are a ton of extra edges throughout. In this article, I share my tips for working with and modifying STL files so you can 3D print them.

If you’re into 3D printing, you’re probably familiar with sites like Thingiverse and Youmagine, which host thousands of free 3D models from users all over the world that you can download and print out on your 3D printer. If you want to print a model, you just download the STL file, load it into your printer software, (I use Cura, from Ultimaker), and you’re all set.

But what if you want to make some changes to the model? If you open it in SketchUp, you’ll probably notice a lot of problems with the STL file that make it really difficult to edit. Things like subdivided faces, (Edges that divide a face into multiple faces, even though they are on the same plane), make it impossible to use the Push/Pull tool on a surface. Many times they are missing faces altogether, or extraneous edges acting as prison bars over any holes or cutouts in the model.

Rotating Objects in SketchUp.

Matt DonleyNews, Sketchup Tutorials

Moving and rotating objects in SketchUp are the most common manipulations you can do to objects. This article will show you the various ways you can rotate objects, and show you a few shortcuts as well.

Rotating objects is one of the fundamental tasks you perform while 3D modeling. In the spirit of simplicity, SketchUp comes with one tool for this task; the Rotate tool. But this one tool has many hidden features that can give you all the functionality you would ever need to manipulate objects in SketchUp.

You even have the ability to rotate objects without using the Rotate tool.

There’s a really handy shortcut for rotating groups and components using the Move tool. If you think about it, if you need to rotate an object, you’re probably moving it into position as well, so it’s really convenient to not have to switch tools if you don’t have to.
Move Tool

Everything you need to know about SketchUp 2014

Matt DonleyNews

The next annual release of SketchUp is here. Aside from the numerous performance enhancements to SketchUp and Layout, there have been some additional features added to both programs that I’m very excited about. I’ve also updated the SketchUp to LayOut book for 2014. Articles/Announcements SketchUp 2014 is here This is the official blog post from the SketchUp team announcing SketchUp …

3 LayOut Tips I Forgot To Mention In The Webinar

Matt DonleyBooks, Layout Tutorials, News

To celebrate the launch of my new book ‘SketchUp to LayOut”, I hosted a free webinar on launch day. (If you missed the webinar, you can watch the replay at www.Sketchuptolayout.com) This was my first ever live event, so needless to say it didn’t go off without a hitch. Shortly after the webinar, I slapped myself on the forehead as I realized some of the essential tips I forgot to mention in the webinar. So here they are:

The Best Feature of LayOut

This one is so obvious, I can’t believe I forgot to mention it. Hands down, the best reason you should be using LayOut to present your SketchUp models is that LayOut maintains a dynamic link to your SketchUp models. This means that you can insert viewports of your SketchUp model into a LayOut document, and if you ever make any changes to the model down the road, you can tell LayOut to update the viewports to reflect those changes.
Sketchup Layout update
There are a few things to watch out for, but first, let me bring you up to speed on how viewports and model references work:

Using Guides in Sketchup (No, not THOSE kinds of guides)

Matt DonleyNews, Sketchup Tutorials

SketchUp_tape_measureWith the Tape Measure tool, you can create an infinite guide line in SketchUp that allows you to use the power of the Inference System to snap to. I use guides all the time in my model to help me model accurately. But I also find myself creating “custom guide geometry” in order to help me place objects that are difficult to inference. In this post, I’ll show you how to create your own guide geometry.

If you don’t know about the Tape Measure tool, you should. It’s a great way to create a special type of line called a guide line that you can snap to in your model. I use them all the time when modeling. I’ll add a few in order to position an object, then delete them right after I’m done using them. Other times I’ll just leave guides in the model till I get overwhelmed with dashed lines everywhere,at which point I’ll go to the Edit menu and select “Delete guides” to get rid of them all.

MakerFaire 2013

Matt Donley3D Printing, News

Back in September, I attended the 2013 World Maker Faire in New York. This was my second time going to the faire, only this time I received a personal invitation from the SketchUp team to join them in the SketchUp booth for the weekend! It gave me the opportunity to talk to a ton of people about SketchUp, and introduced them to a few open source projects that SketchUp partnered up with for the event.

What is MakerFaire?

Maker Faires are events organized by Make Magazine, a really cool company that is at the center of the Maker Movement. “Makers” are people just like yourself, who love to build, create, tinker, think, question, experiment, and MAKE all sorts of things.

Best 3D Printing Plugins for Sketchup

Matt Donley3D Printing, News, Sketchup Tutorials

Sketchup is a great tool for creating models for 3D printing. I recently built my own 3D printer and have been learning a lot about how to design printable models in Sketchup. These are the 3 plugins I can’t live without when modeling things for my printer.

NOTE: Depending upon which version of Sketchup you have on your computer, there are different methods of installing plugins. With Sketchup Make & Sketchup Pro 2013, they introduced the Sketchup extension warehouse which makes installing plugins much easier than before. The only problem is that they don’t have ALL of the plugins available. Some of the plugins I recommend below are not available through the extension warehouse, and must be downloaded from the Sketchucation forum. If you don’t have Sketchup 2013 or you are trying to install one of the plugins not hosted on the extension warehouse, I recommend checking out Installing the Sketchup STL Exporter Plugin for details on how to install these types of plugins.

Layout Pattern Fill & Hatching

Matt DonleyLayout Tutorials, News

With the release of Sketchup Pro 2013 came the new pattern fill feature in Layout. Not only is this a great solution for providing hatches in your Layout documents, but pattern fill can also be used for creating a number of unique effects. I’m going to show you how people have been creating hatches in Sketchup, as well as how to use the new Pattern Fill feature in Layout.

Why we need hatching

A Hatch is a symbolic pattern added to a drawing in order to help identify materials, objects, and spaces. They also help define section cut planes. Architects have been doing this for decades. Even before computer aided drafting they would draw in hatches by hand.

  • Most hatch patterns are standardized, which makes them universally understood by whomever is interpreting your drawing.
  • Hatches help visually identify areas that represent materials or objects from areas that are just empty space.
  • Hatches help differentiate between material types. For example, different types of wood look very similar to each other if rendered as a realistic material. However, if you use hatches to define the different types of material, the hatches are easily distinguishable. This ensures accurate interpretation of your drawings.
  • Hatches help define the plane of a section cut.
  • Hatches tend to communicate better when printed out on a black & white printer, as compared to printing out realistic materials applied from Sketchup. Plus, they save on ink.

Everything you need to know about Sketchup 2013

Matt DonleyNews, Uncategorized

It’s here! Sketchup 2013 was released on Tuesday, and you’re probably wondering what’s new! Well I’ve got you covered. I’m going to tell you everything you need to know about Sketchup 2013,

Before I jump into my overview of what’s new, I thought it would be helpful to share links to a number of important pages that will help you understand all the changes that are going on.

Official Sketchup Announcements

  • Introducing Sketchup 2013 This is the announcement from Sketchup explaining the overall picture of the release. In the article, John Bacus highlights the new Extensions Warehouse, improvements made to Layout, and the rebranding of the free Sketchup; Now called Sketchup Make.
  • (re)Introducing Sketchup Make
    This is more of a reflection on how Sketchup has grown, and how important it is to them to continue to offer a free modeling program. With Sketchup Make, they reaffirm their allegiance to always provide a version of Sketchup that is free. (Notice the backlink to my pinewood derby tutorial? Woo hoo!!)
  • A Closer Look at Layout
    Here’s an in depth look at the specific changes made to Layout. There are numerous performance upgrades, as well as many additional features added to Layout. Some features include pattern fill (hatching), new annotations, copy array, and increased zoom levels.