Book Image

3D Printing with SketchUp - Second Edition

By : Aaron Dietzen Aka 'the Sketchup Guy'
Book Image

3D Printing with SketchUp - Second Edition

By: Aaron Dietzen Aka 'the Sketchup Guy'

Overview of this book

Working with the amazing 3D printing technology and getting access to the printing hardware is now easier than ever before. While there are many other resources that cover the general process of 3D printing, this book is the ultimate guide to creating models for 3D printing using SketchUp. You’ll start with a basic understanding of how SketchUp is used in the 3D printing workflow and jump into the steps to create a print-ready model using only SketchUp. This 3D printing book will guide you in using SketchUp to modify existing 3D files and cover additional tools that make SketchUp an even more powerful modeling tool. As you advance, you’ll learn how to transform 2D images into 3D printable solids, how to create multi-part prints that can be assembled without the use of fasteners or glue, and how to make sure your model, whether designed from scratch or assembled from preexisting geometry, is ready to be made real via your 3D printer. By the end of this book, you’ll have the confidence to bring your design ideas to life by generating your own 3D print-ready models with SketchUp.
Table of Contents (13 chapters)
1
Part 1: Getting Prepared to Print
6
Part 2: Modeling for 3D Printing

Exporting multiple parts for printing

We exported more than one piece in the previous chapter (Chapter 7, Importing and Modifying Existing 3D Models), but in this chapter, I want to get into more of the hows and whys, especially in relation to a model like the one we just made that has 13 pieces to be printed.

Prepping multiple groups for output

There are two ways you could approach exporting multiple groups for printing. You can either arrange the pieces exactly as you want to print them and export them as a single file, or you can select and export each group independently, arranging them for printing outside of SketchUp.

I will always recommend exporting each piece individually, rather than as a group. This gives you more control once you leave SketchUp and allows you to print each piece separately. Looking at our model, I want to print the house on my SLA printer, and my landscape in white filament and my tree in green on my FDM printer. The easiest way to do this is to...