Hi Stuart, will you be printing Dudley all in one piece, or do you want him to move? If you want him articulated, printing the pieces separately and snapping them together like a ball jointed robot afterwards is recommended, because the clearances needed to print a moving assembly in one go will leave the joints loose and sloppy. You will want all the parts in one group of you mean to print him in one piece. I wouldn't explode everything though, or you'll end up with a non-solid mess. It's usually better to make the individual groups solid and then use the Outer Shell tool to combine them into one solid group. If I were you, I'd make this model one piece first to get a feel for the process, and then if you want to mess around with clearances for joints and assembling pieces, make another model. Just an idea.

Thanks Rich.

Hi beikaboda, welcome to the forum! Great questions. Yes, you will need to model in a margin for the slide , usually 0.3 - 0.5mm clearance is a good starting point. You may need to adjust the margin depending on the accuracy of the printer. For the screw, do you want it to slide in easily, or do you want the threads to 'bite' into the hole? 4mm hole for a 4mm screw is going to be a tight fit, so make it a ~0.2mm larger or smaller depending on how you want it to work. For such a tiny hole, fewer segments are better - 6 or 8 segments should be plenty. Hope that helps!

Now that I am back on a computer I've had another look, and you have other problems. You are using layers incorrectly. Layers in Sketchup should only be used to control visibility and as such only groups and components should be assigned to different layers. All raw geometry needs to be on Layer0, once you have grouped it you can assign it a layer. To put it simply, if you explode everything down to raw geometry nothing should disappear when you turn a layer off.

Take a look at Simplify3d: http://www.simplify3d.com/ I use it with my Lulzbot Taz 3 and it allows me to pick and choose where I want to add supports. It's well worth the investment and the slicing is much faster than slic3r.

On 4/7/2015 The Current: 3D Printing Trade Shows, Announcements and Upcoming Events 3D Printed RC Car & Other Cars, Boats, or Rockets New 3D Printer Stores, Retails, Farms, Funds & Jobs 3D Printing engineers scientist mathematician physicist 3D Printing Architecture Building, Structures, Houses & More will be moved and merged with, Current news on 3d Printing 2015 in a sub page section; PLEASE GO OR CLICK HERE. http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=388%26amp;t=60582%26amp;start=0 for new postings. Star trek is quickly becoming a real fact by 3d printing; Warp Drives Proof; By James Cochran; page 1: Warp speed: So here we are '"Warp Drives", "Hyperspace Drives", or any other term for Faster-than-light travel is at the level of speculation, with some facets edging into the realm of science. We are at the point where we know what we do know and know what we don’t, but do not know for sure if faster than light travel is possible' I say Hyperspace travel can be done by two warp engine mounted simular to that of the star trek interprise. Now is light travel possible? -if I say no, we can stop right now, but if say yes than I must prove it. Frist my hypothesis statement that you can traveling faster than speed of light. Second hypothesis statement is my proof that I can prove it with elementry mathematics, with simple primitive geometry of space and with matter/energy of modern physicis. see page 2 next week

osting History: New( 2016 vol 4 ) Current news on 3d printing 2016 Active _ 1/6/2016 today news key stories continue here. http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=388 ( 2015 vol 3 ) Current news on 3d printing 2015 Active _ 1/8/2015 today news key stories continue here. http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=388 ( 2014 vol 2 ) Current news on 3d printing Has 528 Replies 29455 Views Last posted on 1/8/2015 by duke jazz http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=388 ( 2013 vol 1 ) 3D printing "What's in the news" Thread Was Locked away because of unacceptable use of the embed features. no access Sincerely yours, dukejazz

@jim said: It is because of how the exporters currently work that missing faces are a problem. An STL file a simple list of triangle vertices. Even if a face is missing in the SketchUp model, their vertices do still exist. So maybe an exporter could "make up" the missing faces just from the vertices. That would be awesome Right now if there are missing faces, I run the model through Netfabb, which is a program that will fix minor problems like that really quickly. @jim said: @marcus: Thanks for the info. I bought a copy of your book; would recommend it to anyone interested in using SketchUp for 3d printing. Much appreciated, Jim!

Thanks, James Happy New Year

@skyways128 said: @ Jim: I emailed my client, but he hasn't replied yet. If he's okay with it, I'll attach the file here asap. I didn't mean to imply you should share the file here; you could PM or email it if your client is more comfortable with that.

@pbacot said: Look at the possibility of using a transparent png texture as well. Would love to see what you come up with! Pbacot gives you a good suggestion you may also try transparent PNG textures also.

The tools to help you resolve issues with non-solids... Solid Inspector will show issues but not fix them... Then in combination with an 'edit'... Layers - all switched ON [in case you have nested objects on OFF layers, or even worse! geometry on a layer that is not Layer0 that is off !!] View > Hidden Geometry > ON [shows invisible edges and 'hidden' objects] View in Xray mode [allows selection and deletion of internal edges] Section Planes [to allow you to access the inside of objects to remove faces, edges etc] Select + <delete> [to delete unwanted faces/edges] Erase [to remove unwanted edges by picking] Move [to select and relocate vertices to heal small holes etc] Line Tool [to over-drawn edges and [re]create missing faces] Remember that a solid group or component can only contain geometry. Every edge must have exactly two faces. So that means... No faceless edges. No edges around a hole [no matter how tiny]. No edges forming the unbounded side of a flap or shelf. No internal partition faces, which would then have some edges used by three or more faces. No otherwise seemingly solid boxes touching on a shared edge - which then has four faces. No exactly overlaid coplanar faces with shared edges - can happen [rarely] with some plugin operations.

@d12dozr said: @skyways128 said: So, I work in meters and export in mm? Got it. Nope Import as meters, work in meters, export in meters...do everything with Sketchup using meters. When you open the model in another app for 3D printing, THEN you import as mm and the scale will be correct. Whoops! Thanks for the clarification!

Did you look at Budget machine. under $1000 What is your price range. I think in my case, speaking for myself, my income need to increase. I find the Budget machine are high for me too. -dukejazz

hey John, Here are sone people ratings of the best machine's Reviews are in at the 3dhubs Welcome to the 3D Printer Overview. 3dhubs.com| http://www.3dhubs.com/3d-printers "Curious about the best of best? Find our full reviews in the 2015 3D Printer Guide, or jump straight to one of the 5 categories: Enthusiast, Plug ‘n’ Play, Kit/DIY, Budget or Resin."

I have been drawing a big amount of good 3D objects with SketchUp Version 8. You just have to make things correctly. I use Netfabb basic to check my errors or close holes. NFB helps me a lot! Scaling or not halving 0.1 mm makes things easier. I have found Sketchup easy to learn and my drawings are getting better all the time. You can try purely mathematical program OpenScad.

Robotics and 3D printing continue to converge on many different levels. Whether it is the robotic movements of 3D printers themselves, or the creation of better robotics through the use of 3D printing for complete customization, the technologies definitely have a magnificent future together. We have seen numerous robots created through the use of 3D printing, which has allowed for their total customization, while at the same time saving hundreds or even thousands of dollars in machine and injection molding costs.

Thanks for the help guys, really appreciated.

thanks all! Great forum for us newbies. Shaun

Thanks Mike for sharing, It's a Awesome product with great price!! I like the 3D result just as same as the 2D Printer, full-color 3D printer is good. I think it's time to pick one up to my studio, I like colour object more than single colour.