The last section extrudes turning less. Overlapping etc. Well the plug-in is still very useful when I can cut and join the halves = solid object. This was (the last twisted torus) extruded from an involute gear. 12 tooth. A quite heavy task.

Yes, some slow movements from me when doing the sphere "decoration".

Jaaaa, Hot air blower plugin could do some organic... FDM printing is just easier with a one side flat model...

Late answer, there are still places on this sphere without the web.

That image disappearing problem is called, in fact a "camera clipping" problem. It's not actually a problem but more an issue as if we hadn't got it we couldn't dive into walls or stuff like that.

The issue has to do with the position you are looking the model at and it's way more recurrent in parallel because in perspective you have a clear notion of where you are. Cycling from parallel to perspective modes might cause the issue if you get to close to model by zooming in a lot in perspective, and then you cycle to parallel and zoom out. As your camera is in fact very close to the model it clips the model either in perspective or parallel. However in parallel there is no distance to subject as there is no point (2 or 3 point) perspective. If you zoom out camera sticks to place but the parallel view get's smaller. In perspective camera moves away from the model.

That is why switching from parallel to perspective causes the issue but also corrects it if you know how to apply the right zooming.

Large models are specially prone to this kind of stuff happening.

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.

I didn't see that, thanks Marcus.

Colors and textures seem fairly straight forward. There is a color hierarchy similar to SketchUp where Face (amf triangle) color over-rides Group/Component (amf Volume or object) color.

In amf, vertices may also have a color although I am not sure how that might be represented in SketchUp.

@ccaponigro said:

I would argue that having a well placed component origin is critical for swapping components later as well. And Dave R what was that slick little tool you used to create the countersink for the bolts?

Indeed! You are correct about well-placed component origins. The blog post I did after the one I linked to demonstrates that.

The tool I used to create the counterbored holes is the Drill tool from the Wudworx tool set.