I've been playing with modelling a trout with the intention of converting it to a mould (injection mould) and using it to cast soft plastic fishing lures. I made different model the other day, printed it, shot some plastic through it and it worked really well so am going to make some more It's going ok (see attached)... but I was wondering how people would go about adding the detail work such as scales and the gill plates (better than I have... first try at this kind of surface detail work). Is there some way to make the textures with relief to 'wrap' around an object?

Ok.. tried it and it was a bit too aggressive in how many stray edges it removed on the first run though on default settings... I will play with it and see if I can make it work. Thanks for the suggestion!

Sorry for the late reply... life!

I've not seen this plugin. I will have to check it out!

I have access to all of this software and the entire Autodesk suite and we use Inventor as our primary CAD software, however, I am doing this with 14-16 year old kids and there is nothing better to learn how to work in a 3D space than SU and if I can keep everything in the one place, without having to switch between software then the kids are going to get the idea better and faster. SU is faster and more intuitive than most CAD software packages and the kids can use it for drafting before moving on to Inventor or Fusion 360 to do do our final plans and renders. With this, they are designing model cars for the F1 in Schools program where the emphasis is on the engineering and design process so we do as much virtual testing as we can to supplement the physical testing on cars we mill with our 3-axis cutter and print with our 3D printers. With all the incredible plugins people, like the those from the Sketchucation community, make SU is becoming as important for our analytical testing as it is for our CAD work Thanks again for all the work you guys do...

Not sure what I did different, but I got Flatten to Plane to do what I needed! Lots of cleaning up to do but it worked! Thank you all for your assistance

Flatten to Plane nearly worked. It projected edges but if edges weren't present, like with curved faces that curve under the shape that don't have boundary edges, it left them blank. I learned to make new work planes with it so this has been a plus

This is what I'm talking about:

On the left is the top view of a car concept we are playing with. The 2D view on the right was drawn first and the centroid found and labelled with the cross-hairs. Then I realised that we had made a mistake (not the axles... we haven't worked out how we will attach them yet), and the two top views are not the same. So I was hoping there might be something to make the left view automatically. I could get them to do it in Autodesk Inventor and then import it back into SU but was hoping to try and keep things all together.

I haven't gone through the other suggested plugins yet but will try them and see what they can do.

I'm fine with the centre of gravity and the centroid.. just wanting to know if there is something to make 2D projected geometry from 3D shapes?

Is anyone aware of an extension that can project the geometry of the current 2D view to a separate group (without volume)?

I have a need to find the footprint of complex shapes to work in conjunction with extensions that locate the centroid of a face and the centre of gravity of a group/component. I am currently drawing the top view separately so I can find the centroid and then modelling the 3D model to match. I am using this with school kids who are designing model cars to race in the F1 in Schools competition and we have found that a very close approximation of an aerodynamic property of an object called the centre of pressure can be found by finding the centroid of the car's footprint. Such an extension would help the kids a huge amount in their design and virtual testing phase before progressing on to virtual wind tunnel testing.

If such a plugin doesn't exist, I would love one of the developers here to make it a project I'm thinking of plugins such as the Flight of Ideas SVG extension which can create vector paths from 3D-to-2D projected geometry. It would be great if a plugin could do a similar thing to create different components for use within SketchUp

This is before I apply a material... so the default black line.

It's nearly 1am... will try tomorrow. Thanks for your help.

When I change the edge style to by materials all my lines disappear LOL.

Ok.. I'm having trouble doing this... but will have a play with it to see if I can make it happen.

Does that mean that in back edge display mode the colours the edges were assigned would show through?

I've made a 2D 'template' for a third angle orthographic drawing and I want to be able to display the hidden lines in the various projections. This is where I am at so far in the sample I'm making for my students:

I'm trying to get the hidden lines to show through a little more clearly by making the more important ones show through a different colour.

Is it possible to change the colour of the back edge when back edges are displayed and can you vary this between groups/components?

The models were aligned to the origin in standard orientation. It was one of the things I personally checked to make sure this wasn't a factor. I'm not 100% sure, but it seems to me that all features like edges, groups, components, and planes, are ignored in the conversion from SU format to STL format and none of this information is saved with the model. When you use the export STL plugin from the Extension Warehouse you need to select all parts of the model you want to convert (I just go CTRL-A), choose the format (binary or ASCII) and the units and away it goes. If you haven't exploded groups/components and turned off edges it will tell you it has ignored these things in the process of creating the STL file. This is what leads me to assume that things like datum planes are also being ignored in the process. I need to workout how to reorient the model in Pro E by inserting new datum planes... which I don't know how to do yet. Maybe if I could export the SU file as some other format that preserves these features that would solve my problem???

The kids in one of my design classes have been making SketchUp models that we have been cutting out using a CNC router. This is all going well. For the next part of the project they need to make a portfolio to show how their models progressed and evolved. The final requirement of the portfolio is to include orthogonal drawings of their models. I know this can be done within SketchUp manually, or using the Ortho Views plugin, however; we have Pro Engineer at work and we have been trying to make the drawings using it instead. The problem we are facing is that when we create an stl file it does not create datum planes in SU that allow Pro Engineer to define the front of the car that allow it to make ortho drawings from the model in the correct orientation. The solution has been to try and reorient the axes in Pro E but we have tried everything we can think of and can't seem to be able to reorient the front of the model when we open the stl file made in SU in Pro E.

So the question is, is there a way to ensure the datum plane orientation is preserved when the stl files are being made so that when we open a file in Pro E it is in the same orientation as it was in SU and that the front is defined correctly (and the other sides assigned correctly)?

Thanks, again. I'll have another go now and see if I can make it work.

Cheers,

Simon

Thanks for your help. I appreciate it.

I'm not sure what you mean by:

@unknownuser said:

You can set their insertion point and give them gluing and hole-cutting properties.

I use groups/components frequently for things like this but might try, as you say, to resize things at different stages and hold off exploding them until all is finished (though I guess I could leave them grouped because when exporting as an stl it ignores things like groups and edges).

I'm making custom Lego pieces for robotics and the piece I'm working on now is part of a tool I'm getting ready for 3D printing (with Shapeways) and its total length is only 16mm. There is a bit of detail in it as well. This is an exported 2D graphic of the finished part before scaling it down (model size here is 1600mm high):

I can not resize it down without distorting it no matter what I try.

Luckily, it doesn't take me long to draw this part so I think I will redraw it again at the actual size and try making the faces larger and leaving it in groups (btw... I've always wanted to know.. what's the difference between a group and a component?).