Google SketchUp Design Tip – Fix Flipped Faces
Rotary Sprinklers by Supermange
If you’re using Google Sketchup for designing 3D printable models, you may have noticed that exporting to STL’s using some of the various plugins can be very hit-or-miss. After checking out Supermange’s rotary sprinklers I was reminded of this quick fix for a very common design problem in Google Sketchup – the “flipped face.”
Looking at the screenshot above, you’ll notice that the facets of the object are either a white-and-light-gray tone or a dark-gray-and-darker-gray tone. As a surface modeler, Google Sketchup doesn’t much pay much attention to whether a surface is on the outside or inside of a model. However, once you turn it into an STL, this can create problems.
Fortunately, this is an easy problem to fix. All you need to do is right click on the darker face (such as much of the top right flange of the model above) and select “Reverse face” from the menu. While you can select multiple faces at once and flip all of them simultaneously, this still leaves a minor, and somewhat tedious, problem of detecting the flipped faces in the first place. If they are too numerous or tiny to locate, you might be better off using some STL correction software to fix the flipped faces.
| Tagged with | design, design tip, exporting, exporting stl, flipped face, google, google sketchup, reverse face, sketchup, supermange | 5 comments |
5 Comments so far
Ben
Any suggestions for STL correction software?
Len
Yes please, I have several models extracted out of a computer game that have many faces in need of reversing.
John Bacus
Hi guys,
There might be a better way to do this. If your model is manifold and connected (which it will have to be if you plan on sending it to a 3D printer) you can automatically orient the normals on all connected faces with one operation.
Select a face in the connected mesh that is facing the direction you want. Activate the context menu and choose “Orient Faces.” SketchUp will walk the mesh looking for faces not oriented in the same direction as the face you picked… and flip them to automatically to match.
hope this helps-
john
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John Bacus
Product Manager, Google SketchUp
TeamTeamUSA
Here are some:
http://cloud.netfabb.com/
http://meshlab.org/
http://www.netfabb.com/basic.php
Use the former online tool first, and if you still have problems use one of the others.
E_Roth_3
I’ve found that the Manifold plugin ( http://sketchuptips.blogspot.com/2010/02/plugin-manifold-22-for-sketchup.html ) will work much of the time. It’s also handy if you import an STL and you want to simplify its triangulation for further editing. A warning, it HAS crashed SU8 for me a few times…I always save before running.