update I got it to work. But it is unsatisfactory for my purpose here. It would be really great if you could select which point on the geometry that you are dropping hits the surface of the curved substrate. As you can see from this screenshot (maybe), here, it is the left side of the squares that defined the drop point. this results on half of the object being nested into the geometry, and half of them just touching a corner.

@ntx dave Hmm, I'll give it a shot.

Hi All-

I have a group of components that I would like to 'drop' onto some geometry below. I am using the Drop GC extension to do this. I can get it to work if I create individual components, but if won't work for this group of components, even if I do it individually. I tried creating simpler shapes within each component (which are already pretty simple) dropping them, and 'respawning' the desired shape. No luck. All Drop GC does is incrementally drop all components the same amount, as if I were manually moving them as a group along the Z axis.

Obviously this could be done manually here--there are only 16 instances-- but, I would like to know that this extension works for its purported purpose.

Any Ideas? Or better extensions?

See screenshot and file

All the best,

-Revel

maso_button_square_v3_solid.skp.zip

Hi all- I am trying to perform a subtract operation with these two objects: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ydbonm5d7wy0297/Screenshot%202015-10-15%2023.10.55.png?dl=0

neither are solid-which is my problem... although the phone object is a manifold .stl, it didn't maintain that status upon import to sketchup. I do not understand why the speaker object is mot manifold...

any ideas about how to perform this operation are appreciated.

Thank you,

-Rev

reciever_low_poly.skp

Thank you all for the excellent solutions.

@sdmitch wow, um thats amazing. can you elaborate on how you did that a tad? ruby console from within sketchup?

Hi All-

I imported a rhino model, but as a sketchup file. https://www.dropbox.com/s/9o6u1e0fy6qd82z/Screenshot%202015-10-03%2016.44.07.png?dl=0
I intersected it with a plane to get this file (attached).

I need to find the center of all these circles so I can make squares based on that reference.

How do I find the center of these circles ?

Thank you,

-Revel

circle spiral.skp

Hi All-

I am printing this model of a telephone, see attached. Its going to have some functionality, the buttons with interact with a raspberry pi inside, and there will be a speaker in the handset. I've received it from the designer and parted it out into mostly printable pieces. There are two issues:

I would like to 'boolean' out some holes for the buttons. I think I know how to approach this, but I wanted to run it by you. What I would do is transfer the shape of the buttons to the face of the phone body, then use the offset tool to enlarge those shaped a tad, then push pull them through.

Also, some of the pieces are non manifold. Whats a good way to go about fixing this?

thank you,

-rev

sept_8~.skp.zip

@dave r said:

Here's a revised version with more reasonable segment counts.
[attachment=0:18lroju6]<!-- ia0 -->Screenshot - 9_5_2015 , 5_42_38 PM.png<!-- ia0 -->[/attachment:18lroju6]

How did you you redo the model with more reasonable segment counts? And what is a general rule for establishing reasonable segment counts in sketchup?

hello all- I am trying to intersect this cylinder with the curved surface of the model such that they maintain a manifold mesh. the idea is to delete that reverse face protrusion and end up with a hole through the model. whats a good way to to do this? I have tried 'intersect with model' etc. any way other than fredo plugin? surely this can be done natively!

thank you for your help

all the best,

-Revel

bed bolt prototype.skp

Hi guys-

You all really helped me with a large 50 cm tall print I did back in June I believe it was. http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=388%26amp;t=62325

I am here to request some more help with a big print. the biggest component is attached. it is barely bigger than my build platform, which is 11" diameter (circular) by 17" tall. there are going to have to be some slices through the front of it, I see no way around it. so the question really is: what are some good ways to attach / weld PLA plastic seamlessly? As I'm writing this I am realizing that this is sort of outside of the purview of this forum since it doesn't specifically relate to sketchup...

but while I'm here I guess I have another question that is pertinent to the forum: I noticed that when I converted this model from NURBS to a mesh in Rhino that there were some clusters of long skinny polygons which I understand are not desirable for 3D printing. Is there a way to change this within sketchup? or better to do this in rhino? please see attached photo and file.

-Rev

phone.skp.zip

Thanks. In retrospects it was a bit of a silly question, sorry.

ps that looks sweet!