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3D Printing a Model | SketchUp Help
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Before you print a model on a 3D printer, you need to make sure your 3D printer can understand your model data. Here’s a quick overview of how to set up your SketchUp model for 3D printing:
- Orient your model so that the 3D printer has a base on which to build your model. Your 3D printer prints your model one layer at a time. If your model juts out at the top, the 3D printer has nothing to build upon. For example, if you want to 3D-print a gear, rather than orient the gear vertically, place the gear on its side, as shown in the following figure.
- Make sure your model is a solid group. With your group or component selected, choose Window > Entity Info. If your model is a solid group, the Entity Info window tells you so in the upper left, also shown in the following figure. If your group or component isn’t solid, download and install the Solid Inspector 2 extension created by Thomas Thomassen and available via the Extension Warehouse.
(In SketchUp, select Window > Extension Warehouse, search for the extension, and click the red Install button.) This extension helps you analyze why your model isn’t solid and repair and holes or issues. For example, if your model contains internal geometry, then your model is not a solid.
- Check that the fronts of faces point outward. (And thus, the backs of faces need to face inward.) Technically, making sure all your faces are oriented the correct way is called checking the normals. To check that the face fronts point outward in SketchUp, select View > Face Style > Monochrome to see whether the back sides of a any faces point outward. By default, the face fronts are white and face backs are dark gray. To reverse a face, context-click it and select Reverse Faces. If you use Solid Inspector 2, the extension can find and fix the reversed faces for you.
- Your model needs to have a volume.
For example, if you want to print a box that’s hollow in the middle, the faces along the outside of the box need to have a thickness, as shown in the following figure.
After you check that your model is ready to be 3D printed, you need to output your model to a format your 3D printer understands, also known as the STL format. To export your model as an STL file, see Importing and Exporting STL Files for 3D Printing
Note: As 3D printing technology improves, SketchUp users are sharing new tips and tricks for great 3D-printed models all the time. To connect with other SketchUp users, check out the SketchUp User Forum.
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3D Printing with SketchUp: 10 Tricks | 3D Printing Blog
3D Printing with SketchUp: 10 Tips and Tricks
by Fabian | March 30, 2017
SketchUp is one of the most popular 3D modeling & design programs for 3D printing, as we found out from our analysis.
However, preparing a SketchUp model for 3D printing can be a little tricky. That’s why we put together a list of 10 simple yet effective tips and tricks to make your SketchUp design 3D printable.
Some simple clicks before getting started will make your life easier: you may want to set your SketchUp template to metric or imperial units. This way, you won’t need to re-scale the printing size of your model later.
You can change the template by clicking on Window > Preferences > Template and selecting ‘3D Printing – Millimeters’ or ‘3D Printing – Inches’.
2: Install the SketchUp STL ExtensionTypically you can save your 3D model as a SketchUp file (SKP). Even though our online 3D printing service accepts these files, you might want to get SketchUp’s free STL Extension. The STL file format is the most commonly used in the 3D printing community and will make it easier to share, print, and edit your design in other software.
With the SketchUp STL extension installed you can export your model as an STL file. Make sure to select the same unit type that you chose in your template (millimeters or inches) when exporting, and choose the binary file format to reduce the size of your file.
3: Avoid Paper-Thin Surfaces & Set Wall ThicknessesIn order to make your SketchUp model printable, you need to ensure that each and every surface has a wall thickness. Without setting a wall thickness, a 3D printer has no information about how thick or how thin it is supposed to print your part.
The picture below shows a model with paper-thin surfaces (not printable, left) and a solid object with thick walls (printable, right). If you want to learn more about how thick your walls need to be exactly, make sure to read this blog post.
4: Make Your Model Watertight (Manifold)A printable model must not feature any holes in its surface. Ask yourself the question: if I were to put water inside my model, would it flow out? If that’s the case you need to find these holes and close them.
This is one of the trickiest parts of creating 3D printable models in SketchUp.
The design below is an example of a model that is not watertight. You can clearly see that there is one big hole on its surface.
Once this hole is closed (for example by drawing new lines), SketchUp recognizes that the object is solid on the inside and ready for the printer! You can see such a watertight (also referred to as manifold) object below.
5: Avoid Internal OverlappingIntersections and walls within your design can make your life difficult since your model needs to have one continuous ‘outer shell’. That’s why it makes sense to think about your model in a 2-dimensional space first.
In the case below, the left shape will not be printable once it is pulled into a 3-dimensional object since it will feature paper-thin walls within the object. The shape on the right, however, won’t be a problem to print once it is pulled into a 3D object because it will only have one ‘shell’.
It doesn’t feature paper-thin walls on the inside. We’ll look at an automatic way to create one outer shell later.
Creating watertight models with one continuous outside can be tough sometimes. Luckily SketchUp lets you check if you made any mistakes.
Here’s how it works:
- Triple-click on your model with the select tool (this will select everything).
- Right-click on your object and select ‘Make Group’.
- Right-click on your object again and select ‘Entity Info’.
If you designed an object with holes (not watertight) and internal intersection (not in one shell) the Entity Info window will say ‘Group’. This means that your model is not printable and you’ll have to check it again. Right-click on it and select ‘Explode’ to re-edit the components.
If you designed a watertight model in one shell, the Entity Info window will say ‘Solid Group’ and then you know that your model is ready to be 3D printed (in the next steps we’ll tell you how to fix this).
Looking at your model from the outside means that the inside is a ‘black box’ for you. However, even the inside of your model could feature many modeling mistakes that would make your object unprintable. In the example below, the ‘Entity Info’ window indicates that the object is not solid.
Since it looks solid from the outside, it makes sense to take a look at what’s going on inside. Select a surface (face) you want to hide and select ‘Edit’ > ‘Hide’. And voila: you can find the trouble-making mistake. Alternatively, you can switch into x-ray-mode by clicking on ‘View’ > ‘Face Style’ > ‘X-ray’.
8: Create an ‘Outer Shell’We already pointed out that designs with overlapping objects create problems for 3D printers. The good news: there’s an automated solution for creating one ‘outer shell’ around the overlapping objects, deleting all internal overlapping parts.
To start with, we have these two solid blocks. Each of these blocks was ‘grouped’ separately (Select > Right click > Make Group). We also selected the x-ray view to make things easier.
We then move one block into the other. We now have overlapping areas in the interior of this object.
To get rid of these, we select one block, click on ‘Tools’ and choose ‘Outer Shell’.
The last thing to do is to click on the second block. SketchUp automatically created one solid group out of these blocks. As you can see, the internal overlapping parts are gone. The result is a new solid object that is ready to be 3D printed!
9: Fix Reversed Faces (Inverted Normals)Another problem that can occur is so-called inward-facing or reversed faces. This means that a surface of your model is facing in the wrong direction (typically this means that it is facing the inside of the object instead of the outside). These surfaces are automatically colored in light blue.
To fix this, right-click on the inward-facing surface (face) and select ‘Reverse Faces’. You can see an example of this in the image below (left). On the right, you can see the object how it is supposed to be: all faces point to the outside again.
10: Increase Circle/Arc Segments to Getting Smooth CurvesSketchUp ‘smoothens’ arcs and circles in its visual presentation. Even though circles might look perfectly spherical in SketchUp, they are actually only made of 24 sides. Click on ‘View’ > ‘Hidden Geometry’ to see theses sides. When being printed, this circle might come out quite edged.
When you select the arc or curve tool, SketchUp will show you their default sides in the bottom right corner. You can then enter a higher number to increase the number of sides. Validate your entry by hitting the ‘Enter’ key and then draw your arc or circle.
The image below shows a comparison between the default 24 sides (left) and 150 sides (right).
Sometimes problems are tiny and hard to see with the naked eye. There are SketchUp extensions like the Solid Inspector 2 that find problems automatically and point them out to you. Simply select a group or component and activate the Solid Inspector tool for an analysis of what would prevent it from being a solid manifold.
Another handy extension is CleanUp 3. It allows you to cleans up and optimize your SketchUp model with handy tools like “Erase hidden geometry” and “Erase duplicate faces”.
Also, SketchUp added a cool feature to their 3D Warehouse that was developed by Materialise. When uploading a model to the 3D Warehouse, you can check the “I want this to be 3D printable” button (see video below) to get modeling errors fixed instantly. This tool will make your 3D model watertight and allow you to download it as an STL file. While it might lead to somewhat less accurate results, it’s a very fast way to get a printable file.
So if you’re searching for an easy-to-use tool that will save you a lot of time and effort (no more searching for file issues, no more exhausting fixing sessions), this is the tool for you.
Did you manage to follow our tips and tricks and create a printable SketchUp file? In order to send it to our printers, download the SketchUp 3D print service plugin. Alternatively, you can upload your models here and choose from hundreds of material options.
Get high-quality 3D prints like these with i.materialise’s online 3D printing service.
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How to export a 3d model to STL format
3D printing is possible only on 3d models of certain formats, often this is the STL format.
We also accept other formats (STP, STEP, IGS, OBJ), but later they are converted to STL. In order to avoid possible errors and (automatic) model changes during conversion, we recommend that you immediately send us the STL format. Below you will find information on how to export/convert your 3d model to STL format in the most popular 3d modeling programs. Please note that your models must be designed in accordance with the requirements of 3D printing modeling.
When selecting from ASCII and Binary .stl, it is recommended to select Binary as the file size will be smaller. As a rule, the size up to 20 MB is more than enough. After exporting, we highly recommend viewing your model in one of the STL viewers such as viewstl, Autodesk 123D Make or 3DViewerOnline to make sure everything was exported correctly.
How to export STL for 3D printing from Autodesk AutoCAD:
Export to STL format is only possible for solid (closed) 3D objects
* Enter DISPSILH on the command line and set the DISPSILH parameter to 1.
* Enter ISOLINES on the command line and set the ISOLINES parameter to 0.
* Enter FACETRES on the command line and set the FACETRES parameter to 10.
* Move the export object to a positive octant (all 3 coordinates: X-Y-Z must be positive).
* Select the export object and enter STLOUT on the command line (For AutoCAD Desktop files - AMSTLOUT). .stl extension.
* Choose a location, enter a name and save the file.
How to export STL for 3D printing from Autodesk 3D Studio MAX:
* First of all you need to merge all normals and make them positive. In the Surface properties column, click Unify and make sure the normals are in the correct position.
* Remove extra vertices. Select all the vertices and from the Edit Mesh menu select Weld.
* Check the model. Run the STL check command from the Modifier list. If the model has errors, it may not export correctly. To check, you need to exit the edit mode.
* File > Export> select file type “StereoLitho [*.
STL]”
* Enter file name and save location
* Select Binary file type and save the file
How to export STL for 3D printing from Autodesk Inventor:
* File > Save as > Save Copy as
* Select STL
format * Assign a name to the saved file
* Binary
format * Select inch (inches) or mm (millimeters). The latter is preferred. to avoid confusion
* Select high resolution (Resolution > High)
* Click save button
How to export STL for 3D printing from Blender:
* File> Export > STL
* Assign a name to the saved file
* Select save location
* Click the save button (export STL)
How to export STL for 3D printing from Catia:
* In order to export the entire assembly as a single STL file, you will need to do the following:
* Select entire branch of files
* Tools>Generate CATPart from product
* Assign name
* Merge all volumes of individual files into one volume without checking.
* Click OK
* Accuracy (resolution) of the STL file match the accuracy of the working window settings
* Tools > Options > General > Display
* Select Performance tab
* In the 3D accuracy column, select Fixed
* Set the parameter to 0.02mm (.0008in)
* Set Curve accuracy to 0.2
* File > Save As
* Assign a name to the saved file
* Select STL
format * Click the save button
How to export STL for 3D printing from Google Sketchup:
* Google Sketchup cannot save to STL without installing a special plugin (for example here)
* After installing the extension, the STL format will be supported for both export and import
* Select an object (without selection, the entire model will be exported)
* File > Export > STL
* Assign a name to the saved file
* Click save button
How to export STL for 3D printing from Rhino:
* File > Save As
* Select STL
format * Assign a name to the saved file
* Save
* In the STL Mesh Export Options window, set the Enter Tolerance to 0.
02 mm (0.0008 inch), click OK.
* Select type Binary
* Uncheck Uncheck Export Open Objects
* Ok
How to export STL for 3D printing from Solidworks:
* Tools > Options > Export or File > Save As
* Select STL
format * Open Options
* Select format Binary
* Select a good resolution (Resolution > Fine > Ok)
* Assign a name to the saved file
* Click save button
How to export STL for 3D printing from Solid Edge:
* File > Save As
* Select STL
format * Open Options
* Conversion Tolerance set to 0.0254 mm (0.001 inch)
* Surface Plane Angle set to 45.00
* Save file
How to export STL for 3D printing from Pro Engineer:
* File > Export > Model
* Select STL
format * Set Coordinate System Standard to
*Set Chord Height 0
* Install Angle Control 1
* Save the file
How to export STL for 3D printing from ZBRUSH:
* To convert, you need to install a plugin, for example 3D Print Hub
* After installing the plugin, you need to make sure that your PolyMesh 3D
model * Select model ZPlugin >3D Print Hub
* Click Update Size Ratios, a window will appear with several options for working area sizes, select the one that suits you.
