We’re creating a new guide: 3D Printing from SketchUp. It’s a work in progress, but you can take a peek at the link below. We’d love to hear your feedback: What else would you like to see in a guide like this? Any feedback on the information we do have?
http://www.go-2-school.com/sketchup/3d-printing
Eeeek, could you choose something a little…less sucky? SketchUp produces some really really terrible files for printing, doesn’t support STL natively (requires a plugin) and a bunch of other things. Sure, it’s easy, but in the end it’s going to cause more frustration than it’s worth.
Agreed. I’d choose tinkercad before sketchup.
at least its a start
@ThantiK We’ve found SketchUp to produce great files for 3D printing. I’m curious: What about SketchUp’s files has been terrible for you?
As for exporting STL, “there’s an app for that”… or more accurately, there is a SketchUp-supported extension (they helped develop it) that works perfectly for us. Sure, it’s not native, but then again that doesn’t really matter much so long as you have it installed (it’s free).
@Whosa_whatsis As for TinkerCAD, it’s a great design application for 3D printing. I totally agree on that front. That being said, 3D printing enthusiasts that use SketchUp would argue that they have more flexibility to build anything in SketchUp than they could in TinkerCAD.
Still, no matter your design tool of choice, the main point is that it works for you. SketchUp is just one option. I just wanted to make sure to point out that we’d disagree that it is inherently inferior to the other choices.
@School , SketchUp regularly flips edges, faces, regularly doesn’t close edges properly, absolutely obliterates any complicated model you have, etc. It really is quite possibly the worst 3D modeling software out there to pick.