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Perfect, Dave! Thanks!!!
Sketchup and drawing Threads (Question for Dave Richards)
- Thread starter Brent Dowell
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I have a much greater appreciation for your skill and efficiency in working in sketchup Dave.
I've spent a bunch of time yesterday and today working on this and I think I'm getting the hang of the tools.
Here I've created some 1/4-20 threads, internal and external (really the same, just with faces reversed and a box around it for the internal) and I chamfered them using a cone.
I can definitely see creating a set of reusable components in the sizes I generally use. This is a bit tedious, but probably because I'm learning while I'm doing it.
So far my workflow is something like
0) Setup the workspace to use meters.
1) create a helix
2) create a rectangle the size of the pitch and diameter
3) Create the shape of the thread based on the pitch and major and minor basic diameteres
4) use the vertical extruder to create the object.
5) Use 2 planes to chop the thread off flat at the top and bottom using intersect faces
6) Clear out the internal unnecessary structures (This is probably the most tedious)
7) Use the CleanUp3 extension to reduce the extraneous faces
8) Use SolidInspector to find any holes in the mesh and clean those up manually.
9) Chamfer if needed.
10) For the internal threads, scale about x/y by about 5 percent to adjust for 3d printing.
11) Export the STL File using 'Model Units'. There are other options, but this prevents from doing any conversions.
12) Import the stl into Simplify 3d. S3d Will prompt saying the model looks very small and ask if it should be scaled to mm, say yes.
I'm not sure how this magic works when I'm entering the Inch units into SU as meters and then scaling as mm in S3d, but it just seems to work.
I've spent a bunch of time yesterday and today working on this and I think I'm getting the hang of the tools.
Here I've created some 1/4-20 threads, internal and external (really the same, just with faces reversed and a box around it for the internal) and I chamfered them using a cone.
I can definitely see creating a set of reusable components in the sizes I generally use. This is a bit tedious, but probably because I'm learning while I'm doing it.
So far my workflow is something like
0) Setup the workspace to use meters.
1) create a helix
2) create a rectangle the size of the pitch and diameter
3) Create the shape of the thread based on the pitch and major and minor basic diameteres
4) use the vertical extruder to create the object.
5) Use 2 planes to chop the thread off flat at the top and bottom using intersect faces
6) Clear out the internal unnecessary structures (This is probably the most tedious)
7) Use the CleanUp3 extension to reduce the extraneous faces
8) Use SolidInspector to find any holes in the mesh and clean those up manually.
9) Chamfer if needed.
10) For the internal threads, scale about x/y by about 5 percent to adjust for 3d printing.
11) Export the STL File using 'Model Units'. There are other options, but this prevents from doing any conversions.
12) Import the stl into Simplify 3d. S3d Will prompt saying the model looks very small and ask if it should be scaled to mm, say yes.
I'm not sure how this magic works when I'm entering the Inch units into SU as meters and then scaling as mm in S3d, but it just seems to work.
Last edited:
- Messages
- 16,585
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- Reno NV
1/4-20 samples. The plastic screw fits into the plastic threads ok, still a little tight at 1.05%. The metal screw starts fine and then gets a bit tight after about 1/4". Think I'll bump up the scaling on the internal threads a bit more and see how that fits, but overall, It seems to be on the right track.
Dave Richards
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That's pretty good Brent. One thing to keep in mind is that the internal and external threads are slightly different. I don't think scaling the external threads up in just the X and Y directions will be adequate.
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- 16,585
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- Reno NV
I'm thinking youre right. Working on messing around with those dimensions now.