Which browser do you use?

SketchUcation does not use pop-up ads. You probably have some crapware toolbar installed in your browser.

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.

Hmm, if you add an empty Group instead of a CPoint it also works; and then you may need to worry less about cleaning up since the empty group will get swept away.

Which is worse: CPU time or Disk I/O time?

You will need to do your own testing, but here's another possible work-around..

in Windows, save the definition as "nul" (or "\\Device\\Null"), and Mac as "/dev/null/"

These are special files that will not actually write to disk, but just throw away the data. But the definition path will be changed.

It's not exactly what you are asking for, but maybe better than creating double files on disk.

This is for my own use - not for any that will be shared.

What is the best way to catch and log extension load errors? I would like for SketchUp to log errors to a file, maybe print a note in the Ruby Console, but not interrupt loading with the Load Errors dialog.

I know I can redefine the load method, but I want to make sure I don't break something else.

There's this, but Windows only and not up-to-date and needs compiled, etc.

Google Code Archive - Long-term storage for Google Code Project Hosting.

(code.google.com)

I edited my snippet - it was a bad example without the namespace.

Better to just find and replace Set.new with Sketchup::Set.new

Here's my crazy idea for solid inspector.

Solid Inspector is a Tool, so you need to have it active to see the problem geometry. But then when you try to fix it using the standard SketchUp tools, the Solid Tools indicators drop out.

So long ago I wrote a toy that cycled a material color. How about marking the problems with a animated material? Then when you drop into the normal SketchUp tools to repair the model, you can still see the problems?

@skyways128 said:

@ Jim: I emailed my client, but he hasn't replied yet. If he's okay with it, I'll attach the file here asap.

I didn't mean to imply you should share the file here; you could PM or email it if your client is more comfortable with that.

I'd still like to test the file that was giving you an error, if you can manage it.

Wow, thanks for the great answers, links and videos everyone! I understand the process better.

I installed several of the applications listed here. It looks like most do have a number options for selecting an infill pattern. This removes a huge burden from SketchUp users (and 3d file exporters) by not needing them to generate an inner shell.

It is because of how the exporters currently work that missing faces are a problem. An STL file a simple list of triangle vertices. Even if a face is missing in the SketchUp model, their vertices do still exist. So maybe an exporter could "make up" the missing faces just from the vertices.

@marcus: Thanks for the info. I bought a copy of your book; would recommend it to anyone interested in using SketchUp for 3d printing.

@jim: I do have the Stl plugin (since I wrote much of it,) and Cleanup, but would also recommend thom's Solid Tools 2. Making better exporters is the main reason I asked.

NaN in Ruby and some other languages means "Not a Number"

ruby on rails how to deal with NaN

I have read few posts regarding NaN but did not figure out how to deal with it in Ruby on Rails. I want to check a value if it is a NaN I want to replace it with Zero(0). I tried the following lo...

Stack Overflow (stackoverflow.com)

@Frank - Are you really using SketchUp 8, have you tried the latest version of the SketchUp STL Extension, and can you share the .stl file that is causing the problem?

@stagelight said:

Maybe this is new for 2015? But this code, will save as version 7, no confirmation needed. Just run in the ruby console...
model = Sketchup.active_model
status = model.save("", Sketchup::Model::VERSION_7)

Oh that's interesting. It only works if the model has already been saved. I may have made things more difficult than they are.

So what you want is to be able to choose a version to use as the default one time, then just use a shortcut or menu item to save the model?

I don't mean to interrupt the dukejazz show, but I had a question or two.

If you want to 3d print an object that you have modeled in SketchUp, how do you tell the printer that the object is hollow? I mean, a typical SketchUp solid does not have an "inner" shell, only an outer shell. Wouldn't it get rather costly to print a SketchUp solid? Does the slicing software automagically "shell" the shape?

A second question I had - does the "small geometry" issue in SketchUp really matter on a hobby-type extruder such as a makerbot? What is the typical diameter of the plastic as it exits the extruder head? If your SketchUp model dropped a few small faces, would the final print really suffer?

I'd willing to have a look. Do you have the current source somewhere we can get at?

@driven said:

would it not be better to do a search and replace changing Set to Sketchup::Set in the script...

Yes.

I edited my example to remove the code snippet - it's a very bad idea.

You can replace all occurrences in the script from Set.new with Sketchup::Set.new

Not sure - it still works fine for me.