1 Topic by Caucasian

  • Caucasian
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Topic: Strange stuff happening with Sketchup/Skeinforge

So I was trying to make an adapter for a solar filter for a scope, it more or less is a ring that is thicker on the outside, a thinner inner portion, and then a hole.

I designed it in Sketchup, everything looks normal, ran it through cloud.netfabb and then ran it through Skeinforge.

It removes the inner 'thin' layer, and replaces the hole in the middle with a plastic circle.

I have made several things in Sketchup, so I know what the solid surfaces are, and this is designed right. I can load it later for others to view.

When loading the repaired file into Repg, it is screwed up too. So I took the original STL file, loaded into RepG, and it looks like it is supposed to. I Skeinforged it, and it added back in the plastic in the middle and removed the thin layer when viewed inside of Pronterface.

I'm stumped.

Does anyone know of any good software for this? Or does someone know of a fix?

Here's a link to the netfabb with the original and the repaired.

http://cloud.netfabb.com/?key=81cf3b94f … bcb0970540

2 Reply by IanJohnson

  • IanJohnson
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Re: Strange stuff happening with Sketchup/Skeinforge

There are some serious self intersections of some kind going on with the thin section.  It doesn't seem to be fixable.   How did you model it?  If you can do something like revolve a profile to create it in a single operation, it might come out cleaner.  Or try a free sold modeler like Tinkercad or 123D. 

I tried Netfabb Studio and unloading it to Tinkercad, and both were unable to fix it properly.

3 Reply by jooshs

  • jooshs
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Re: Strange stuff happening with Sketchup/Skeinforge

I've made a couple of these already. I would try what Ian suggested, but if you still can't get it to come out right, I'd be happy to do it up for you in Solidworks if you gave me the dimensions.

Btw, have you tried printing the bahtinov mask yet?  It is very helpful for focusing. It is a cool print too.

4 Reply by lawsy

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Re: Strange stuff happening with Sketchup/Skeinforge

I imported the STL back into sketchup and cleaned it up. There was a couple of things:

- there was a tiny gap around some of the circles, with internal surfaces in other bits
- some of the faces were facing inwards instead of outwards. Notice in sketchup that some are grey and some white? Right click on a white one and select 'orient faces'. This will flip any backwards ones to face the same way as the one you clicked on.

Hopefully the file works for you now.

lawsy's Website

5 Reply by Caucasian

  • Caucasian
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Re: Strange stuff happening with Sketchup/Skeinforge

Thanks for the fix Lawsy! I can see what the issue is now. I think it is time I tried other software out.

I haven't tried the Bahtinov mask yet. I will do that tomorrow after work.

And thanks everyone else for the recommendations!