Sketchup export .STL not working correctly.

I made thid model in sketchup of a small LED shroud I want to print. I made the walls 1.2mm thick so you can do either three perimiters at 0.4mm or two at 0.6mm.

When I export the STL though, and I've tried 3 different plug-ins for Sketchup now, it never works out right. Always has some random fill in the centre where it's not wanted.

I attached a .rar with the .skp from sketchup and the .stl that the official sketchup .stl exporter creates. (link: [extensions.sketchup.com])

can someone help me figure out what I'm doing wrong? I'd like to print this little thing. Thanks!

Sketchup STL's plugin allways do it wrong.
But, usually, it's easy to fix.
Open the STL with Netfabb basic (free) and Repair it.
I attach your file repaired.
Try and tell me if it prints OK now.

VincentM, thank you so much! You don't now how happy I was to see this repaired .stl today.

I spent all day yesterday with blender, meshlab, accutrans, and three different .stl export plug-ins for Sketch-up. Nothing was working!

I downloaded Netfabb this morning and attemtped to fix the .stl myself. It was so easy! just analyze and auto repair, and then resaved it. So simple, thanks again VincentM. I wish this solution was the first thing that came up when searching with google for solutions, but it was just a bunch of other procedures that didn't work at all. I was all set today to try and learn FreeCAD since I thought sketchup just wasn't usable for complex curves and such, but I'm very happy to be making new models and printing them today instead of having to learn a new modeling software.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/28/2014 03:20PM by PrintThings.

Quote
PrintThings
VincentM, thank you so much! You don't now how happy I was to see this repaired .stl today.

I spent all day yesterday with blender, meshlab, accutrans, and three different .stl export plug-ins for Sketch-up. Nothing was working!

I downloaded Netfabb this morning and attemtped to fix the .stl myself. It was so easy! just analyze and auto repair, and then resaved it. So simple, thanks again VincentM. I wish this solution was the first thing that came up when searching with google for solutions, but it was just a bunch of other procedures that didn't work at all. I was all set today to try and learn FreeCAD since I thought sketchup just wasn't usable for complex curves and such, but I'm very happy to be making new models and printing them today instead of having to learn a new modeling software.

I highly recommend learning how to design with OpenScad (free software). You may think that a text-based program style input is inferior to a GUI CAD tool, but the reverse is very much the case. Once you gain a bit of experience you can enter a design even faster than a GUI tool - but the real advantage comes when you need to make changes or additions. Changes that require hours of work on all the GUI CAD applications I have used (and I have used many, both free and very expensive) can be achieved within minutes on a well constructed OpenScad design. Some designs may get you thinking hard about how to achieve them, but I've yet to find anything that cannot be done - and there is usually a very elegant solution as well. A parabolic reflector, for example, can be made by slicing a cone at an angle and performing a rotate_extrude on the exposed plane. After entering the appropriate commands to create a module to do that, you only have to set up all the variables (diameter, focal length etc.) The ability to re-size (distort) any object with separate X, Y and Z factors can be used to good effect to create complex curves reasonably easily.

There's an OpenScad forum where you'll get lots of help if you cannot figure out how to achieve something, and lots of libraries where you can see how other people have tackled a particular problem (some ways being better than others).

Dave

Thanks Dave. I may give it a look, but since my only experience is with sketchup, pretty much anything that isn't dead simple already gets me thinking about how to achieve it, and I need to be able to visualize what I'm doing. After having more experience 3D modeling I can see the text based input being very powerful, as they usually are when one knows what to input.

The Netfabb auto repair worked great for the first couple models I tried. Unfortunately it's failing me now and I'm trying to figure out what my next step is. I wish the private full version was more like $100 instead of $300, then I would try it out, but $300 seems too much to me for private use.

I'll post the couple files I'm having trouble with. The turbine is all in one .rar but the can I had to do separate files cause it was too big.

Are there practices that should be avoided when modeling with sketchup for 3D printing? I'm careful to try and make sure everythign is solid with no holes but it doesn't seem to matter. For example, on the turbine when I made it, I drew a blade onto one of the faces of the 20 side polygon that makes up the "drum" of the turbine. Then I just extruded it out from the flat face, yet netfabb says there are holes all along where the blades attach to the drum, even though they were directly extruded from that face.

The turbine looks ok when you first load it into netfabb, but when you repair the holes part of the middle fills right in. The same thing happens on the can where the nut traps are, and the can becomes unorientable after the repair as well for some reason, even thouogh it is orientable beforehand.

Does using a different modeling software like freeCAD aleviate these issues from the start, or will I still have the same problems anyway? Is there anything else I can do to try and correct these issues manually or with another program?

Any direct help or resources on the subject will be much appreciated!

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/01/2014 06:51PM by PrintThings.

This thread is a bit older, but this may still be useful to someone.
Your turbine has a huge load of errors. Get the plugin called "Solid Inspector". It works wonders for identifying broken sections.
Anywhere a turbine blade connects to the center, there's a surface in between, preventing the model from being a solid (a single outer surface). That will cause all kinds of strange effects.