SketchUp Help

[bostonman]

I'm very confused.

I'm using SketchUp online and created a basic box with a hole on the side wall and four holes on the bottom.

I set my units to be inches with a precision of 0.00". When I opened the STL in the slicing software, it was a tiny dot. After I tried using the default settings in SketchUp and got the same results.

Can anyone tell from the STL file what I'm doing wrong, or know what I'm doing wrong? The box should be approximately 2" x 3.2".

This is the first time I tried creating something where I cared about size; the two or three times before I just scaled the object in the slicing software to be the approximate size I wanted.

Also, I may know the answer to this, but figured to confirm. Why does a large picture of a male (sometimes female) appear? I'm guessing it's a guide so you know where you are as you rotate an object, but, the few times I tried creating something I forgot to delete it and had to go back.

[thm_w]

Its seeing the units in mm, so 2x3.2" ends up as 2mmx3.2mm. Did you correctly set the units in sketchup?
If you just want to fix it then scale by 25.4

Have you tried fusion 360?

[bostonman]

I could be wrong, but thought I set the units to inches (see attached screen shot).

After seeing the difference in size when I looked in the slicing software, I assumed it was either cm or mm, so I tried scaling it by the factor you suggested; and by a factor based on assuming it was possibly cm.

Unfortunately I tried scaling it much, much more than 125.4 and it didn't seem to size it correctly.

Also, the four holes aren't showing in the slicing software, but they show in SketchUp.

As for Fusion, sadly I lost access to a work computer and have resorted to an old XP laptop and Ubuntu (32-bit), so Fusion won't run on it because it needs 64-bit.

[themadhippy]

. Why does a large picture of a male (sometimes female) appear?

to show you the origin point,and give you a perspective of scale.
As an alternative to sketchup how about tinkercad.

[thm_w]

I tried scaling it up by 2540% and it was correctly showing as ~8cm.

There is still an issue with the base of the box, so however the geometry was made is not "valid".
Which is why I recommended fusion, maybe tinkercad works too.

[gmb42]

STL files contain no units, the sizes are arbitrary.  Most software interprets sizes as mm, so if your STL creation software set to inches adds a triangle with sides of 1, then most slicer software will see that as sides of 1mm.

Apparently Sketchup allows you to convert the model units to other values when exporting STL files, see https://help.sketchup.com/en/sketchup/importing-and-exporting-stl-files-3d-printing, so try exporting with the units set to mm.

[bostonman]

I'm still confused when trying to make my own 3D designs.

I was up for hours last night and tonight trying to figure out what is going wrong. The attached is a cover I'm trying to make for a board I made.

I goes over a simple box I made. This design is suppose to have an inner lip to rest on the wall of the box, and the sides that come down lower.

For whatever reason I'm getting lots of incomplete sections that is being filled in with triangles. First I made a rectangular layer and gave it some height (i.e. wall thickness), then I scaled that from the bottom to make the inner lip and raised it a few mm, and scaled it from the bottom to make the otter wall.

There is a cut out on the front to go over the section on the box that has wires coming out, and a rectangle cut out to access switches.

This is driving me crazy because I'm carefully making sure to not add useless lines that may force a rectangle to be drawn, however, I'm still getting them.

I'll guess this STL file is too messed up for anyone to help with, but I did run a repair in the slicing software and it may have made it even worse.

[totalnoob]

Sorry, I can't help you much with your Sketchup question, I have been trying to get away from it since I don't like web based software and the last free version of Sketchup that was installable to a PC is very long in the tooth.  I do have suggestions to the other things you brought up.

Can you not use the free, web based version of Fusion 360 in Linux?  I know it's quite limited (I did not like that you can only have two active projects, and I don't like that its web based, but it is free and if you're already used to Fusion ...  ).  I am not actually using it for 3D printing, but I have been trying to learn how to use FreeCad. I am trying to model some lathe toolholders so that I can set the angles correctly to mill out the pockets for carbide inserts.  I have been using Youtube to figure it out since it has a pretty steep learning curve and is not exactly intuitive, like Sketchup used to be. You should be able to run FreeCad under Linux (I think it's available for all OS's, but I could be wrong), if you want to give it a try.  I can't speak to how well it works with 3D printers (the video I just watched yesterday, the person demonstrating it showed it being used to create a part to be 3D printed, then imported it into his slicer program for the printer and then printed off the part, but then he might have had a lot of headaches doing so that were cut from the video  ).  My jury's still out on FreeCad, (I can neither recommend it nor can I say to avoid it) but it is an alternative that I believe is able to run on Linux, if you want to give it a shot.

[thm_w]

Fusion was able to repair it to a printable condition but then the units were reset, so it would have to be scaled down.

This is like a 10 minute job to draw in fusion/solidworks/tinkercad/etc and there would be no fixing any mesh issues after.
Take the time to learn a new tool or find an old 64-bit PC on craigslist/facebook/garbage room. IMO.

[MarkF]

As for Fusion, sadly I lost access to a work computer and have resorted to an old XP laptop and Ubuntu (32-bit), so Fusion won't run on it because it needs 64-bit.

You could try an old version of FreeCAD (there's a 32-bit executable of version 0.18.4).

https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD/releases
(Scroll down to 0.18.4 and expand the 'Assets' for downloads)

I use FreeCAD but don't know how well it will work on older PCs.
FreeCAD takes a lot to get use to...
Here are a couple videos:

[bostonman]

This is like a 10 minute job to draw in fusion/solidworks/tinkercad/etc and there would be no fixing any mesh issues after.
Take the time to learn a new tool or find an old 64-bit PC on craigslist/facebook/garbage room. IMO.

I fully agree that a new computer is long overdue. As for the mesh errors, I am uncertain if it's just Sketchup that has issues, or if I'm doing something wrong that will carry over into other software.

From what I read, it seems Sketchup is just full of issues; and I'm somewhat discovering this myself.

[thm_w]

See if you can find tutorial videos for solid modelling. Its basically impossible to draw incorrect geometry in eg fusion/solidworks with the basic tools, the program will tell you right away "you are trying to create a 0 thickness wall" etc. AFAIK at least...

[bostonman]

I'll watch the video later today.

I'm not mechanical, but any drawings I've done up till now have been 2D. So I'm use to say wanting a box 1" away from an edge, so I'll draw a 1" line, draw one side of the box, erase the 1" line, and continue drawing the box knowing one side is exactly 1" away. With 2D (such as AutoCAD), what you see is what you get.

The feeling I'm getting with SketchUp (not that I'm defending the need to use it over other software) is that it's extremely basic and not smart. The cover that I was having issues with is for a very basic box I designed using the same methods (laid out a rectangle, gave it some thickness with push/pull, scaled the outer edge of the rectangle, and gave that height using push/pull). I built a circuit and was afraid the exposed leads would short, so I created a rectangular box as a way to practice.

The recent project (the cover to cover the box) was a way to practice a bit more and have a cut out on top for DIP switches. The assumption I have is the mesh issues were a result of incorporating my 2D experiences into 3D work. I'm guessing SketchUp saw some extra lines I used to get the cutout in a particular location and I forgot to delete them (or was unaware they were reinserted after performing an 'undo'), and it created triangles.

Using the automatic repair in the software is nice, but, if I'm making errors, I'd like to avoid them instead of having the computer fix them for me (it's similar to saying I don't need to learn English because auto correct will fix it for me). I think at this point SketchUp is too basic and I'm getting frustrated over issues that are not necessarily due to my inabilities, but because SketchUp needs to be pampered.

As stated, the cover scale wasn't correct (I appreciate the time everyone put into fixing it), and I tried sizing it down by 25.4 (thinking it was in inches and needed to convert it to mm, however, that didn't work. Ironically, I took a guess at reducing it to 10%, held it side-by-side in the slicing software to the box I made, estimated the comparison looked like the correct size, printed it last night, and it was exactly the correct fit. I don't know why 10% worked, however, as stated above, it's a matter of pampering SketchUp and think it's a waste of mental resources to worry too much about it.

In any case, one thing I learned from this recent thread: the slicing software interprets dimensions as mm, so now I use those units of measure instead of inches.

Even though I'm on the electronics side, I'll admit, mechanical drawings are fun.

[Bassman59]

I'll watch the video later today.

I'm not mechanical, but any drawings I've done up till now have been 2D. So I'm use to say wanting a box 1" away from an edge, so I'll draw a 1" line, draw one side of the box, erase the 1" line, and continue drawing the box knowing one side is exactly 1" away. With 2D (such as AutoCAD), what you see is what you get.

One thing I had to grok when starting with 3D modeling (I'm an EE) is that there's no set notion of "origin." Everything is relative to everything else. I use Fusion360 (and I'm sure SolidWorks is similar) instead of Sketchup so I don't know how they differ, but if you want to draw a 1" box, you create a sketch and draw a box with the sides constrained to be 1". Then other things in the design are relative to that box. All of the drawing tools let you specify size and you can reference features to all sorts of other features. (It's really powerful.)

The recent project (the cover to cover the box) was a way to practice a bit more and have a cut out on top for DIP switches. The assumption I have is the mesh issues were a result of incorporating my 2D experiences into 3D work. I'm guessing SketchUp saw some extra lines I used to get the cutout in a particular location and I forgot to delete them (or was unaware they were reinserted after performing an 'undo'), and it created triangles.

I don't know what PCB CAD software you use, nor do I know whether Sketchup allows it, but with Kicad (and Altium) I export STEP files of the entire PCBA, which is board and parts, and then import that into F360 and I build an enclosure around the board. This way, there's no measuring to know where to locate the holes for your encoder. Simply create a sketch for the front panel, set a sketch point for the center of the encoder shaft, and draw a circle with a diameter slightly larger than the mechanical bits. When you extrude the panel, you have a hole of the correct size.

It's really cool when you make a box for your electronics, and the cut-outs for the front and rear panels all just match with your connectors and lights and buttons and it all just goes together.

In any case, one thing I learned from this recent thread: the slicing software interprets dimensions as mm, so now I use those units of measure instead of inches.

Always work in metric!

Even though I'm on the electronics side, I'll admit, mechanical drawings are fun.

Agreed!

[bostonman]

It's really cool when you make a box for your electronics, and the cut-outs for the front and rear panels all just match with your connectors and lights and buttons and it all just goes together.

It is cool.

I've attached two pictures of what the box was being used for. The IC socket sits in a socket I made to protect the pins, and the cover is the part that was repaired by thm_w.

It was a breadboard design and not done in PCB software, however, I'm fully aware that the PCB can be exported and can't wait to have an actual project to create a full PCB and box printed to size.

[bostonman]

I got my hands on a Win7 laptop to tinker with and installed Fusion 360, however, I didn't realize it's cloud based. I'd rather something I can use without being connected to the Internet.

Looks like Solidworks doesn't offer a free version, so is TinkerCAD the next best?

I want software that is somewhat popular so I can gain knowledge using it. Obviously Solidworks is one of choice, but I'm guessing their trial version expires within a month or so.

[thm_w]

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/fusion-360/learn-explore/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/How-to-work-in-offline-mode-in-Fusion-360.html
"Note: Fusion 360 needs to reconnect to the servers every 2 weeks. Plan on returning to Online mode every 2 weeks."


Solidworks has a cheap edu edition, $100 or something. Or you can download the full thing for free from various torrent sites.

[ve7xen]

Looks like Solidworks doesn't offer a free version, so is TinkerCAD the next best?

FreeCAD is probably your best free not-internet-dependent option, IMO. It's pretty quirky and has some limitations (the 'topological naming problem' is a big annoyance), but also pretty powerful and has decent integration with KiCad through the KiCadStepUp addon.

[bostonman]

I'll look, but is FreeCAD the one where it's manually typing code to get objects?

I tried one and was greatly disappointed. eMachine Shop has a one that's fairly cool, a bit basic as far as I can tell. As for Fusion, I became aware of their connecting to the Internet every two-weeks and stuff, but thought I could load it without being connected.

Unfortunately if I want to work remotely in my house (I don't have WiFi), I need an Internet connection. It's quite silly if you ask me because what if I want to spend a few hours in a coffee shop and not log onto their unsecured WiFi?

[sleemanj]

I'll look, but is FreeCAD the one where it's manually typing code to get objects?

No that is OpenSCAD

[MarkF]

I'll look, but is FreeCAD the one where it's manually typing code to get objects?

Watch the two YouTube videos that I linked to earlier in this topic to get started.   
Follow the same YouTube poster for all of his training videos.  They are very good and will reduce your learning curve tremendously.

https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD/releases/download/0.19.4/FreeCAD-0.19.4-WIN-x64-installer-1.exe

[MarkF]

A FreeCAD example of what to expect:

Here is a project box I'm doing in FreeCad for a power supply I'm getting ready to 3D print.
The power supply PCB I did in DipTrace and its 3D viewer created a .step file I was able to import into FreeCAD.
The transformer and terminal strip I made with FreeCAD and exported a .step file for each.
The switch and banana jack .step files I downloaded from 3D ContentCentral.

Being able to import 3D images for each component greatly helps design and layout the overall box.
Many pieces coming together to work out clearances for each component.

Enjoy..
   

And also an open frame mount for my Function Gen and eLoad modules.
Sorry, I don't have a model for the amp meter.