@box said:

There is no one way to fix it. At a guess looking at the picture with seeing the actual model, one way would be to select sections and smooth them

How?

@box said:

I think you'd have more luck repairing you mesh in Meshlabs or similar.
Sketchup isn't really designed to do what you want whereas software like Meshlab, Nettfab etc are .

No, they try to fix whole model in a single pass, it's too complex and they fail.
Using sketchup I could "fine tune" the model sub-region by sub-region.

@box said:

By smoothing the lines surrounding the edges of the hole you can create one surface that is easy to select.

I have dozens of such holes in my model, each one delimited by a contour made of several dozens of segments: doing it by hand would take years... That's why I'm looking for some kind of automation. Maybe I need some kind of "simplify polyline" plugin, but don't know if it even exists or CAN exist.

@box said:

'Clicking the link above' only takes you to the page to download it. You still then have to download it to view it.

Clicking THIS link takes to a download page?!?
http://img22.imageshack.us/img22/7514/zar8.jpg

Anyway, it looks the plugin can actually fill the holes, although for most irregular contours it gives weird results. I wonder if it is tunable to get the "filling" as flat as possible.

Additionally, how could I get this selection

from this manual selection?

This is only a small part of a very large model, it would take years to edit all holes by hand:

That's why I'm looking for some automation.

I can't understand if and how I can use this plugin to select only edges delimiting holes inside a surface, rather than also external edges of the surface itself.

For example, in this case:

I want only this selection:

@tig said:

Why can't you attach the image ?

It's a bit much to ask someone to download and then view it...

You've just to click the above,link, anyway here it is:

@tig said:

You could even attach part of the SKP so we could look at it
Anyway what makes you think CurviLoft 'heals' holes ?

Because it does in one case: "skinning" works fine in filling holes on a flat surface; I thought it could also do it for a generic contour.
Anyway I'm not sure it actually can for any contour: that's why the "if" in parenthesis.

Do I need a different plugin?

I can't understand how (if) I can use this plugin to fill the many holes in this model:
http://img22.imageshack.us/img22/7514/zar8.jpg

I select the contour of a hole, but none of the three buttons of the plugin is able to fill the hole for me.

It would take years to make each single part of a gear & worm sketchy-compatible.
It would take 2 seconds using a script.

Has this plugin been updated? Does it support worms too now?
It would be also amazing if it supported Sketchy Physics...

I have a 3d model which has colours but no textures... at least, I can't see any texture upon exporting it in Collada (.dae) format.
But I need a texture file to convert to VRML and to be able to upload file to Shapeways.
Can I use this plugin to obtain a texture map from my colors?
If not, how can I accomplish this task?

Could this sketchup template be used to build a plugin?
http://woodwork.ars-informatica.ca/sketchup.php?model=spiral_threaded_bolt

Would it be possible to build a plugin based on this sketchup template?
http://woodwork.ars-informatica.ca/sketchup.php?model=spiral_threaded_bolt

Is this plugin supposed to create 3d-printable bolts? I only get plain cylinders with DRAWN threads!
And, by the way, reversed faces prevent a model from being printable.

Can't threads be created too this way?!?

My bad english made further victims...

My original question was not how to just create single objects with strange shapes, but how to join such objects into a working mechanis.

And I was talking about THIS png!!

@unknownuser said:

the funny is that you can import your 3D sketchup Object in a 2D PNG image with a transparent background!

And this does NOT solve the problem, it just crops an image following the external edge of the drawing.

I can't see the video, where is the option to import a PNG screenshot?

@dave r said:

No. Not at all. What makes you think that?

The fact that I didn't update SU for years, I was still with version 6 till a few week ago (I didn't use it so often till I discovered online 3d printing).
Then I tried to download a new version... but Google/Trimble sites are a mess and I can't understand what to download: Google version? Trimble version? Free? Trial? Paid? Limited? Unlimited? Make? Pro? Expireware?
What a mess!

And above all, why the heck does the installer need admin privileges, if once installed it's just a matter of moving the folder to another PC to have SU perfectly up and running?

"Zoom to extent", or how it's named in English, solved the problem.

I'm confused , are SU8 and SU2013 same thing?