@thomthom said:
Suggestion has been made that the project could be extended to GCode eventually to provide a complete package for fabbing and such. https://github.com/SketchUp/sketchup-stl/issues/40
Hmm, in fact my export code is one step towards that already.
I can imagine it can also be useful for 3D Printer. I still don't have one, but the time will come Adding a printing head to my milling machine?
What is missing to use the generated files on Machines like Mendel? Or is this completely nonsense?
Anyway:
What really is missing are scripts that generate these paths now:
For example, generate paths "on" faces, typically all in the same Z-Position.
This is not too complex, a bit more is to make them loop-free and to connect one layer with the next.
But for this I had an idea, as I had the problem already:
Imagine you have a line from top down to a circle, and then further down.
Sketchup will connect the circle and the line. Now what path do you want?
At that vertex of the connection I have four edges. Continue straight is not useful here as you will miss the circle.
Now my idea: An attribute that tells (stores) the expected direction!
If two edges are marked with the same "walk this way" value, then the path is clear.
For my example: The edge from top to circle gets an "A", and the right edge here (of the circle) also gets an "A". The left edge (other side, still on the circle) gets a "B", and the line going down also get the "B". Now the path is well defined and doesn't have problems with interesections. Ok, to select the two edges on a circle is tricky, but it was just an example.
If now someone could tell me how to select and edge within a group (within a group...), then I (aehm, the script of course) could show directly where a problem with the current date exists.
When the path is generated by a script it is obviously easy to set attributes like this.
Ah, and another thing I'm thinking about:
Imagine you have a script that fills a face with lines: But where to start? Where to continue from one layer to the next? One idea is: You draw a line to start the path and where you want to go down. Then you select the face(s!) together with that line, right click and say "fill..." (or so). Now that script has a starting point, and can ask some questions (only material XY, distance from line to line, etc.) and then it fills the face with lines.
This doesn't work well with groups (and the lines should be in their own group), so the idea is not finished yet.
Maybe someone has different ideas how to solve these problems (Continue-here on crosses, filling faces with lines)?
Thanks,
Uli