any sketch up users out there

[anevilgiraffe]

have been tinkering with Sketch Up, with a vague notion to get something up on Shapeways, but what I make in Sketch Up is embedded as measured in metres, obviously I don't want a [SECRET] that needs a shipping container to keep it in, so does anyone know how to convert that into millimetres or even centimetres...

a straight move of the decimal point essentially, but within Sketch Up seemingly beyond my button mashing...

[Raxxus]

a meter is 100cm and a cm is 10 milimeter

[anevilgiraffe]

yep... and that wasn't funny the first time someone tried that on another forum...

so, to repeat, does anyone know how to convert the embedded scaling within Sketch Up?

[Zafarelli]

I'm not sure I understand correctly - do you just want to downscale something that is say 1 x 1 m to 1 x 1 cm? There's a tool for that. I don't know the the name in the English Tools menu, but in the German version, it is "Skalieren" (scale). Simply select your model, choose the Scale tool, and enter 0,1 in the bottom right box. That should shift your comma one to the left.

The Shapeways printouts are rather grainy, though. Be aware that there will be distinguishable production marks in the printout.

[anevilgiraffe]

cheers,

is that the box at the bottom of the screen, can't manually type in that for some reason and the scale option on allows free hand reduction - annoyingly have 5 seperate pieces and will need to do it on each and get the same freehand movement... 

[Mister Rab]

Not quite technical help, but could you send a covering note to the people who will print your file that you would like them to scale it down to 0.001 of your measurements to give you your [SECRET] in millimetres? One would hope that it's not beyond their wit to manage such a thing...

[Zafarelli]

cheers,

is that the box at the bottom of the screen, can't manually type in that for some reason and the scale option on allows free hand reduction - annoyingly have 5 seperate pieces and will need to do it on each and get the same freehand movement... 

You need grab one of the green boxes, and start dragging it in the right direction (for an equal resize in all dimensions, it should be one of the corner boxes, I think). Then you can type a value in the box.

[anevilgiraffe]

aha... think I have the swing of that scale thing now... but worryingly, everything is in 0.01m, which doesn't like things that I intended as 0.001m - keep getting the about squiggle... so what was 5.2m when scaled down to 0.01 is about 0.05  

think I may move each piece into one file, reduce them down there into the same size and see how that works... cheers

Not quite technical help, but could you send a covering note to the people who will print your file that you would like them to scale it down to 0.001 of your measurements to give you your [SECRET] in millimetres? One would hope that it's not beyond their wit to manage such a thing...

to be honest, hadn't explored that  

[Zafarelli]

There should be template that measures in millimeters instead of meters, should be called "Woodworking and Product Design - Millimeters" or something. I use that for my stuff and never had any troubles with rounding.

[anevilgiraffe]

There should be template that measures in millimeters instead of meters, should be called "Woodworking and Product Design - Millimeters" or something. I use that for my stuff and never had any troubles with rounding.

aha... that was the sort of thing I expected to find... back to random exploration 

[Brandlin]

You don't need to type IN th box to put in numbers whilst using the mouse, just type on the keyboard. That might help a bit. It's a standard sketch up feature.

Remember, sketch up is essentially an architectural tool so it doesn't inherently work to an accuracy of more than 0.1 mm. Although the templates zaferelli pointed out will help you there.

Also, how are you intending to export to shape ways? Not sure if shape ways accepts native skp files and you can't export from the free sketch up version. If you can get sketch up models into shape ways then you'll have to make sure your solids are real ly solids and not just hollow surface... Can be a bit tricky.

I'm interested in how you get on, I looked at this a while ago but never got to the poin of having things made. I do use sketchip extensively for my laser cut kits though. Contact in signature...

[Sangennaru]

There should be template that measures in millimeters instead of meters, should be called "Woodworking and Product Design - Millimeters" or something. I use that for my stuff and never had any troubles with rounding.

indeed!

anyway, i asked the guys from Moddler about Sketchup some weeks ago, and they weren't so happy... let's say that geometrically the scetchup models are crap. So if you want a good quality model you should go for blender o similar.

I personally use sketchup a lot for planning scenic elements for my tables. But only for sketches!

[anevilgiraffe]

I've been unable to convert the metre designs to mm, but have found the settings to change it, and am more than happy to start again... this has been a fun learning curve if nothing else.

the Shapeways site has tutorials on converting sketch up to a format they accept and also on how to check the mesh is watertight... so that should be the easy part... it was randomly doing things in Sketch Up that left me wondering... but with each cock up comes new knowledge