Printing molds

[ChemeJoo]

Let's say I have a design for a chess piece, but I want to print out a mold using a 3d printer. I can't do this by simply 3d printing the chess piece. I have to 3d print a mold, which is an "inverse" of the chess piece because it would be a cube, with a hole in the shape of the chess piece. I would then pour the casting media into the mold.

Is there a way to delete an object from another object on sketchup?

[Rich O Brien]

Yes, it is called a Boolean operation.

If you have SU Pro it has these abilities

[Box]

You can also just place the object inside a cube with its faces reversed and then split the whole thing in half, giving you two half molds.

[gilles]

For SUMake with Outershell:

[Rich O Brien]

@gilles

That's super clever!

[d12dozr]

Love your solution, Gilles!

For more complex models using Sketchup Make, you can also use the BoolTools plugin

[Box]

Just to clarify my earlier comment.
There are many ways to modify geometry and it is important to learn the underlying structure.
First gif shows a manual split, second shows how an excellent plugin can automate it, once you understand how to do it.
Split by hand.

Split by Tig.

[ChemeJoo]

So I've made the mold, but it doesn't export to Cura very well at all. I used a solid checker extension and all of the pieces are indeed solid.

I get a large yellow block in Cura. I used the "solid tools - subtract" on Sketchup to make the mold from the pieces.

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[d12dozr]

Impossible to tell from your images, but if you upload the SKP model we can take a look!

[ChemeJoo]

It's fixed! I saved it as an STL file (with the STL extension) and it worked. I guess some file types simply aren't compatible.