Hello, I am trying to print out a business card made from scratch. I have printed other iterations of it successfully but now that my final copy is complete, I have been cursed and all that is printed is a block, save the Facebook logo!
If I stand the card vertically, “Layers” view shows the details as expected, but when laid flat, for some reason it just prints a solid card with no details!!!
I used Sketchup to create it and have exported the design as an STL, both as a component and not.
Please help, thank you!!!
This is the problem. Sketchup is very difficult to make an actual printable manifold STL file with. When something is “manifold” it is all one solid contiguous piece. Lets say you make a wall, it’s basically a large 6 sided flat rectangular cube right? Now you cut a hole in the middle for a window. In a manifold solid, you now have a 6 sided flat rectangular cube with 4 additional faces. In a non manifold object, you now have your starting wall, but instead of window you get a missing bit of geometry that the cad program doesn’t know what to do with. Sketchup tend to make lots of flat, unconnected surfaces instead of actual solid objects, and when you try to print them, they don’t work. You can try fixing it with things like nettfab, but you may also need to redraw it. It also may contain bits that arent theoretically printable or can’t be printed with your nozzle. If you want, post the STL file here and we can take a look at it.
I’m about to start to redraw it lol… I’m honestly just happy it wasn’t 100% user error.
Attached is the STL. Thanks a lot!!!
Gizmo Buisnes Card (lucky.stl (484 KB)
There are still problems with your stl.
I use SketchUp for all my projects. Get the Solid Inspector plugin to check for manifold.
