[Plugin] Slicer5

pbeseda

I ended up simplifying my model before slicing it. Of course it works perfectly.

Still having trouble with the really complex model both at my model scale (which forces really tiny edges) and full scale. The data is coming from a topo surface exported from Revit. I'll continue to experiment.

TIG

@pbeseda said:

I ended up simplifying my model before slicing it. Of course it works perfectly.

Still having trouble with the really complex model both at my model scale (which forces really tiny edges) and full scale. The data is coming from a topo surface exported from Revit. I'll continue to experiment.
This is a well known and documented issue...
The native SketchUp tools [and their API coded equivalents] will fail with tiny [or enormous] facets [<~0.1mm] - so when using FollowMe, Solid-Tools, Sandbox-Tools or Intersect etc, it's recommended that you work in 'full-size' [i.e. not the size of the physical-model-you might make from board, glue etc, calculating dialog values to suit that... and finally scale down at the very end], OR you can scale up what you have - say x10 [or more] - do the changes [remembering to make x10 changes to dialog entries too!] and scale back down by say x0.1 afterwards. These problem small facets can 'exist' when they are shrunk back down, but they will fail to be created initially. Since

The Slicer tool uses 'intersect' API tools so this 'tininess' is the culprit - the small facets in the mesh can intersect leaving tiny holes in the intersections' resultant edge-loops, these won't therefore 'hold' a face...

funkenpedro

Hi TIG,
In your usage notes you mention manually applying pilot holes to the flattened version of the slices. I can't figure out how to do that so that they would align.
If i draw holes with reference to the centre of each slice group, would they be aligned?
If so, how would i infer to the centre of the each group and then infer to an offset of that should i want more than one hole that is not centred.

I just finished slicing this model, slice thickness was 5mm and spacing was 10. Some of the geometry it produced was not closed. It's probably an issue with my model but I'll ask anyhow - is this a common issue with an easier solution than manually closing all of the slices?

Nice job on the plugin, I'm notoriously cheap and never pay for software if I can get away with it but for this gem I'm cracking the wallet to donate. Thanks.
Pedro

TIG

Thanks for the donation!
I just received it.

As explained in recent posts...
The issue with the slices missing small bits of edges [and thereby not facing and pushpulling to the right size] is caused by the built-in limitations of Sketchup being unable to form very tiny geometry. If the sliced object is small and has a complex mesh surface it can thereby make tiny edges during the 'intersect' processes, and some of these edges might be just too small to survive...
If it occurs in one or two then you can edit the flat instance and draw in a missing section [or use Move to snap two nearly touching vertices together, so a face forms and then you can pushpull using an adjacent piece as the reference. If you have many such failures or are doing a dual-axis slotted set then this is not practicable. In that case I suggest you scale your whole model x10 and apply a similar factor to the dialog entries. When you are done rescale to the original size. Chances are that the tiny edges will then be large enough to form and survive, scaling them smaller will not affect them as perversely tiny edges and facets can exist, but their initial creation can fail in some native tools and their API equivalents - like intersect, followme etc...
The simplest way to scale a whole model is to draw a line a known length - say 1m - then use the Tapemeasure tool and pick th start, then the finish; the VCB says '1m', immediately type in 10m + <enter> and a dialog pops up asking if you want to scale the whole model... answer Yes. The model is now x10 larger than before. Do your operations [remembering that everything is x10 - so slices are now 50mm not 5mm etc!]. When you are done you can reverse the procedure with the Tapemeasure tool - picking the now-10m-longline's ends and now typing 1m and Yes to revert to the original size. You are now free to export the slices as desired at the required size...
This method of tapemeasure-scaling also works on the contents of groups only etc if you are in edit mode, and is a quick and easy way of permanently correcting the size of models or 'parts' you might receive from others etc, that are incorrectly sized.

To make aligned pilot-holes you could punch a circular hole completely though the object and 'subtract solids' to leave voids that would then appear on each slice.
Or after slicing you could making some vertical guidelines [for your Z-version] through all slices [as assembled in their stacked positions]; then edit each stacked slice instance in turn, and center a circle on the top face using the intersection of the guide and the face, then pushpull it '5mm' through the slice to form a hole. The hole will also appear on the flat version. To assist in this use View > Component Edit > Hide rest of model... to show only the current slice being edited. It might also be quicker to make a hole component - a 5mm high cylinder of the desired radius, with it's curved surface revered to look inwards and with its two end faces removed, and its insertion point [axes] located on the top circle's center: you can them insert these in each edited slice at the guides' intersections and explode them - their merged geometry should maintain the 'hole' through the slice...

Again it the holes are going to be small diameter a temporary scaling-up might be efficacious in avoid missing tiny edges and facets...

funkenpedro

Thanks TIG, i'll try those suggestions when I get home.
Check out my new cardboard cutter:
The cutter part cost me less than my donation

cardboard cutter.JPG

Chris Fullmer

Looks like your 2 slices of the blade on that old singer from having a major electrical emergency

funkenpedro

Mwaha. I'll deny it if anyone ever asks but I've done some of my own house wiring, sometimese I wonder if I'm closer than two blade slices to an electrical emergency.

RonDee

Hi,
I am very new to SU but I've managed so far to get by until now. I am trying to use Slicer5 to slice up my model. My model has 5 components all of which are solids and SU recognizes them as solids. However when I try to group them or create a new component out of them in order to use Slicer5 I get an error that my model isn't a manifold solid. This seems to only happen when the model is in a group/component. I'm not sure what to do, any help would be great.

I couldn't upload the file so I posted it to the warehouse:
http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=a3927e6baceefafe4bb11506a66e5e90

TIG

@rondee said:

Hi,
I am very new to SU but I've managed so far to get by until now. I am trying to use Slicer5 to slice up my model. My model has 5 components all of which are solids and SU recognizes them as solids. However when I try to group them or create a new component out of them in order to use Slicer5 I get an error that my model isn't a manifold solid. This seems to only happen when the model is in a group/component. I'm not sure what to do, any help would be great.

I couldn't upload the file so I posted it to the warehouse:
http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=a3927e6baceefafe4bb11506a66e5e90
A 'solid' is a group or component-instance that only contains geometry [edges and faces] and every edge must have exactly TWO faces - no more and no fewer.
It can also contain guide points and lines as these never interact with geometry.
However, other object like nested groups or component-instances will cause the object to report as non-solid.
You can work on a copy of your SKP and explode the nested objects inside their 'container' - if Entity Info says it's a 'solid' [aka 'manifold'] then you are good to go. If not, then it probably means that after the 'exploding' there are now some coincident edges, internal partition faces etc [i.e. > 2 faces shared by one edges].
Thomthom's Solid Inspector can help identify these issues.
My SolidSolver can try to fix them for you.
You can also 'cut a section' and then try to fix things by hand...

RonDee

Yes all my parts have a volume amount, which I'm assuming means it is a solid because there is no other indication in the Entity Info saying the parts are solid or not. I have both fixSolid and Solid Inspector which helped immensely at getting my model to the state it is now. But the issue is when I group/make component all the parts together to use Slicer5. It says my model is not a manifold solid which I know it is. Maybe I'm doing something wrong?

TIG

Reread what I wrote.
Forget about 'the volume amount' - the top-bar of the 'Entity Info' dialog says 'Solid Group' or 'Group' etc. If the selected object is a solid it says it's a solid...
Adding two solid objects into a single group does NOT produce a single solid group.
A solid can only contain faces/edges, so two nested groups inside it won't ever make a solid even if they themselves are solids in their own right.
Explode the two solid objects inside the group and then that group MIGHT report as being solid.
BUT if those two previously 'solid' objects touched on an edge or had coincident faces etc, then their merged geometry will not meet the simple rule about every solid's edge only having exactly two faces: shared edges can have >=4 faces, coincident faces might have edges with 3 or 4+ faces.
So explode any nested solids to get back to one potential solid, and if you are unlucky perhaps with some further editing to move or remove non-compliant edges and/or faces, you'll get a single solid...

hebron

Cant seeem to instal Slicer, i put the files in the Plugin Folder and nothing happens.. :s

TIG

Hebron

Please complete your profile details...
You give me no useful clues as to your OS or SketchUp version etc...

Slicer5 is v8 only, with additional options in the Pro version...The current [recommended] version is v8M4

Have you actually read the installation/use instructions?

@unknownuser said:

RBZ
For >= v8M2 you can install this .rbz archive from Window > Preferences > Extensions button [or using Thomthom's 'Simple Installer' tool], the Slicer5 Extension and Toolbar should be auto-activated. Read the instructions...

ZIP
For < v8M2 - or a manual install you can extract this .zip archive and place the Slicer.rb file and the subfolder with all of its files intact into the Plugins folder, restart Sketchup. You need to activate the Slicer5 Extension from Window > Preferences > Extensions, the Slicer5 Toolbar may also need to be activated from View > Toolbars. Read the instructions...

So how have you installed it exactly ?
What have you tried ?
At what point is it not doing what's expected of it ?

randomroutine

hi tig,

im working on a model, its a 3d scan with some optimizations, and i cannot slice it with slicer5: it always complaint for "selected object is not a 'manifold' solid"
i was editing the object in blender and sculptris, and theres no problem in those programs.
what am i doing wrong?

thanks,

krisztian

Rich O Brien

It's not a solid volume.

Try using TIG's solid solver or Thomthom's Solid Inspector to find the problem.

TIG

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with using non-solid objects when modeling - provided that you don't want to report true volumes, or to do boolean operations using the 'Solid' tools etc... Some tools rely on the object being 'a manifold solid' for them to work properly...

"Slicer5" needs to make multiple intersections of the object of a plane that steps up/across/through the object... and then for each of those slices it has to decide what is a solid and what is a void, so it can then add faces appropriately to the cut-edges and then pushpull them into 3d slices.
So if the object is not a manifold solid it's going to be possible to intersect it with the plane and on some occasions we'll get a set of edges that won't be able to form a continuous loop, so this in turn can't take any faces and then in turn there is nothing to be pushpulled into a 3d slice.

A 'manifold solid' contains just edges and faces, and every edge has exactly two faces - no more and no fewer - so no holes in surfaces and no flaps where some edges have only one face, no faceless-edges, no internal-partition faces where some edges will have three or more faces, and of course no nested groups/components etc which also render the object non-solid [even if they themselves are 'solids' in their own right]. Exceptionally 'Guides-lines/points' are allowed inside a 'solid' but not recommended...

The earlier [much more limited version] of 'Slicer' [still available] did not have the v8 solidity check, and if you were to try it it might offer what you want, always provided that you realize that the 'leakiness' of non-solid forms will never give a full set of 'true' slices...

Non-solids are repairable...

Thomthom's 'Solid Inspector' tool reports on a selected object - highlighting areas where its solidity is compromised.
My 'SolidSolver' tool [get the latest/recent update] tries to fix such issues.
If there are obvious issues like 'large holes' in the surfaces, I suggest you edit it and manually repair those first.
However, 'SolidSolver' can be useful for tidying up the less obvious internal-partitions, tiny flaps and minuscule holes etc... that can all compromise 'solidity'. The more things you have that need fixing the longer the repair might take - some repairs break other aspects which then need fixing themselves etc, and of course anyone can contrive an object with such convoluted non-solidity that after several attempts at a fix it will remain firmly 'non-solid'...
SolidSolver will eventually report [in desperation] that the object is indeed 'irreparable' unless you do some significant manual reworking of its geometry...

Also note that if a solid object has tiny facets it might fail to form the intersected edges <~0.5mm and also fail to face/extrude into slices. In that case scale-up the model, scale-up you slicer settings to match, make the slices successfully and then scale-down - the tiny edges/facets can exist but their creation reaches a finite minimum limit as the tolerances can consider two points as being coincident when they are only a tiny distance apart, so no edge is made to span that tiny gap, and of course a face needs a continuous loop of edges to exist so it can't form...

Oxer

Hi TIG,
I have a similar error like pbeseda:

@pbeseda said:

Error; #<TypeError; reference to deleted Face>
> C;/Program Files (x86)/Google/Google SketchUp 8new/Plugins/TIG-Slicer/TIG-Slicer.rb;2041;in `pushpull'
> C;/Program Files (x86)/Google/Google SketchUp 8new/Plugins/TIG-Slicer/TIG-Slicer.rb;2041;in `fatten'
> C;/Program Files (x86)/Google/Google SketchUp 8new/Plugins/TIG-Slicer/TIG-Slicer.rb;2041;in `each'
> C;/Program Files (x86)/Google/Google SketchUp 8new/Plugins/TIG-Slicer/TIG-Slicer.rb;2041;in `fatten'
> C;/Program Files (x86)/Google/Google SketchUp 8new/Plugins/TIG-Slicer/TIG-Slicer.rb;2035;in `each'
> C;/Program Files (x86)/Google/Google SketchUp 8new/Plugins/TIG-Slicer/TIG-Slicer.rb;2035;in `fatten'
> C;/Program Files (x86)/Google/Google SketchUp 8new/Plugins/TIG-Slicer/TIG-Slicer.rb;1612;in `run'
> C;/Program Files (x86)/Google/Google SketchUp 8new/Plugins/TIG-Slicer/TIG-Slicer.rb;793;in `initialize'
> C;/Program Files (x86)/Google/Google SketchUp 8new/Plugins/TIG-Slicer/TIG-Slicer.rb;657;in `new'
> C;/Program Files (x86)/Google/Google SketchUp 8new/Plugins/TIG-Slicer/TIG-Slicer.rb;657

This is my Console Ruby Error:
Error

I work on Mac OSX Mountain Lion 10.8.2 and SU Pro v 8.0.1517

TIG

Here's v5.14 http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=374969#p374969
It adds a submenu item to activate/deactivate its toolbar without having to search through the View>Toolbars list...
It also traps errors that can occur with the Outline option etc where tiny edges can fail to form properly [size related issue].
Now if they do fail then the tool continues, so now the outline might have a few tiny bits missing, but the tool doesn't 'crash-out'.

Oxer: I hope this addresses your issue.
If not, then try Scaling everything up x10 or x100, doing the 'slotting' [making due allowance for the size changes], then Scaling back down to the original size.
The small geometry can exists, it just has problems in its creation.
By now we should all be aware of the tiny edge/facet creation issues, which prevent some native-tools and also some scripted equivalents from successfully making very small geometry...

Rich O Brien

@tig said:

adds a submenu item to activate/deactivate its toolbar without having to search through the View>Toolbars list...

Clever, I'd never had thought of such cool feature

Oxer

Thanks TIG, I'm going to test the version v5.14.
EDIT: The same error message in the Console Ruby with v5.14