Importing STL files (not a solid)

errror404 · 23 Dec 2019, 22:08

Once in a while, I would like to grab a model from thingeverse and just modify it a little to fit my needs. I'm talking about brackets and mechanical parts (not organic / high poly models)

Unfortunately, most of the stuff that I import... sketchup doesn't recognize it as a solid.

Is it because the imported scale is too small? Anyway, most of the times instead of figure out what's wrong, I end up modeling it from scratch.

Any insight would be appreciated!!

Thanks

Dave R · 23 Dec 2019, 22:15

Hard to say exactly without seeing the .stl files you are starting with. Very likely it is a small size/tiny face issue. You might be able to get around it by setting the import units to meters before importing. By their nature, .stl files will have lots of shorter edges due to the triangulated nature of the file so you get to deal with that.

errror404 · 23 Dec 2019, 23:06

@dave r said:

Hard to say exactly without seeing the .stl files you are starting with. Very likely it is a small size/tiny face issue. You might be able to get around it by setting the import units to meters before importing. By their nature, .stl files will have lots of shorter edges due to the triangulated nature of the file so you get to deal with that.

Right after I posted, I figured out there's a way under options to change the units from mm to meters when importing an stl.

I did a quick test and 2 of 3 models imported as solids... thanks for the feedback