Solid inspector really helps.

My point is simple: time is money.

Heartlander uses his printer for business, afaik. He's made dozens of posts here about problems with sketchup. If he values his time at $50/hr and wastes 30 minutes a week wrestling with SketchUp, he could have paid for a license of Inventor LT in under a year - not to mention all the additional features he'd get for free.

My point is just that people often forget the time cost involved when making decisions. If it is a hobby then you can argue the time has no value, but if it is a business then that time could be spent elsewhere increasing revenue.

I'll admit you've got a point there; but you're glossing over the fact that if Heartlander were to switch programs; he would be restarting at the bottom of the learning curve for whatever program he switches too.  That makes the situation a little trickier; as you now have to compute whether time lost using SU is > time lost learning a new program.  Furthermore are the root of his problems inherent to SU and it's limitations; or are they due to just being a novice with CAD design?  If it's the latter investing in a couple of books or a CAD course at the local collage might be more cost effective; afterwords if SU is indeed the limitation there would be a (reasonably) firm foundation with which to build upon with alternate software.

elmoret wrote:

The trick is not using Sketchup. Pony up for some quality CAD software.

That's not terribly helpful here; there are plenty of people that use Sketchup without any need for spending tons of money for a "better" CAD program.  SU has quirks to be sure; but it has 90% of the features for 0% of the cost of a "traditional" CAD Suite; with the "missing" features being things most people won't use.

Your logic is akin to berating people for not "ponying up" for the Super-Mega-Pro-God-Mode-Administrator version of Windows when Window's Home works for most.

My point is simple: time is money.

Heartlander uses his printer for business, afaik. He's made dozens of posts here about problems with sketchup. If he values his time at $50/hr and wastes 30 minutes a week wrestling with SketchUp, he could have paid for a license of Inventor LT in under a year - not to mention all the additional features he'd get for free.

My point is just that people often forget the time cost involved when making decisions. If it is a hobby then you can argue the time has no value, but if it is a business then that time could be spent elsewhere increasing revenue.

The trick is not using Sketchup. Pony up for some quality CAD software.

That's not terribly helpful here; there are plenty of people that use Sketchup without any need for spending tons of money for a "better" CAD program.  SU has quirks to be sure; but it has 90% of the features for 0% of the cost of a "traditional" CAD Suite; with the "missing" features being things most people won't use.

Your logic is akin to berating people for not "ponying up" for the Super-Mega-Pro-God-Mode-Administrator version of Windows when Window's Home works for most.

At any rate; Heartlander, another trick to help is to enable wire-frame mode (View > Face Style > Wireframe).  It allows you to see possible trouble spots; when you add that with Solid Inspector.....

Once I figured out that overlapping edges (or not quite-mating edges) were the cause of 99% of my failed slices; I've yet to have something not slice proper.

I'm not sure the method you used to build your part; but if it's in pieces which you are then connecting together; grouping pieces helps properly "snap" them together; just make sure you explode them back and then intersect everything so you can easily get rid of any overlap.

Yeah, Tim, I'm trying to get PTC to figure out why Creo (Design Elements Express) won't load on my Win 8 machine. I've looked at other packages but most are waaaay overkill and much to complicated for my humble needs. The Creo demo looked perfect... if I can get it to run.

So, I removed the floor, printed it separately. Now it prints just the walls but no shelves or screw holes. Again, the model comes up clean in NetFabb and my Slicer profle has worked great on my other models.

It seems to me that a model designed in SketchUp is best made in pieces, each printed separately and glued together. More likely, there is a trick or two the old gray beards know about this that I don't. Usually the case.

Anyone care to share the Zen of how not to get totally unexpected results. Here's the last model, the one that won't print shelves.

I want to learn what I'm doing/not doing rather than someone just fix it for me.

Thanks guy, for your time and advice.

SD3, SU 2013 (Make), RH, NetFabb local.