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

Understanding what makes up a SketchUp file

SketchUp saves its files in its own format as a .skp file. A .skp file contains much more than just the geometry we need for 3D printing. Before we dive into how to import and export geometry, let’s spend just a few minutes looking at what makes up a SketchUp file, and where importing and exporting will fit into the default file format.

When you create a SketchUp file, regardless of the intended purpose of the final model, you create a file that contains a lot of information. When you think about all of the different designers that use SketchUp in their various industries, it is easy to imagine how many different models could be created. Architects, interior designers, furniture makers, and landscapers are all using the same software that you are, and they all create different models. This is not a problem, but it is something to recognize as we ask SketchUp to help us create geometry that we can send to our 3D printer.

While...