SketchUp’s Extension Warehouse is full of useful and faster working tools or extensions which will make the 3D printing and working on it better than before.
3D printing or additive manufacturing is way of making three dimensional solid objects from a digital life. The creation or making of a 3D printed object is achieved using additive processes and in this process, an object is made by laying down successive layers of material till the object is created. Each of these layers can be visible as a thinly sliced horizontal cross-section of the eventual object. So basically 3D printing is the opposite of subtractive manufacturing which is cutting out a piece of metal or plastic with for specimen a milling machine.
SketchUp is just made for 3D printing and designing in SketchUp is cool as 3D printing is something that moves is cooler and unique than that. In this article we are going to discuss about a few features that can be include by the users to make their creations more than just interestingly shaped hunks of immobile plastic. Aidan Chopra and Rebecca Huehls this time comes up with new tricks about 3D printing in SketchUp.
Aidan Chopra was a beloved member of the SketchUp team for 10 years; he is the creator of SketchUp Blog where SketchUp members and professionals share their new designs and tells some tips and tricks to design various designs that help users a lot. This Blog has attracted huge number of people and helps them to know more about SketchUp tools and extensions, moreover that users can now easily use SketchUp in their everyday life. Aidan also taught countless classes on SketchUp, he authored the SketchUp for Dummies Book.
Two tools from the SktchUp Extension Warehouse are important for every 3D printing work and they are: CleanUp3 and Solid Inspector2; both of these are created by Thomas Thomassen. Here is a little information about both of them:
- CleanUp3: This extension checks and simplifies the geometry of every SketchUp model and combines multiple faces, deletes extraneous data any lines that don’t create a face. There are also two most useful CleanUp3 options in the Warehouse such as Erase Duplicate Faces and Repair Split Edges which can be enabled in the CleanUp3 menu. These two options are errors that surely appear in the model while working in SketchUp and they drive 3D printers nuts; moreover that these two are hard to identify and repair manually. This extension also simplify STL or 3D-printable files that are imported into many triangles and by removing that triangulation, CleanUp3 makes files downloaded from 3D printing communities easily edited in SketchUp.
- Solid Inspector2: This extension finds and highlights problems that are stopping SketchUp 3D models from being a solid shell and its usefulness cannot be exaggerated. It also highlights problem areas and helps users automatically from one error to another and does the repairs much faster. So it is must have tool in every SketchUp model.
While working with 3D modeling in SKetchUp, everyone should run CleanUp3 periodically and run Soli Inspector2 before exporting from SketchUp to 3D print is also necessary as they both will help to find errors that would cause the printing failure.
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Published By
Rajib Dey
www.sketchup4architect.com
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