patrick's blog

This entry is about drawing for flat colors and not texture maps etc. There are ways of producing color mapped SketchUp prints, but I will have to address that as a separate subject, though many of the underlying drafting principals will be the same.

I thought I would let you folks know what the LGM team has been playing with recently.
For those of you that want a STM (Solid Terrain Model) product or traditional terrain sales model, but really and truly don't need the price tag or museum quality piece.

The above is 40"x28"

The model is milled out of high density urethane foam with a true color, high resolution, surface image.

I haven't been on here in a bit, but my recent use of the new Free plugin prompted me to get back in to the swing of things.

The following was a file I was asked to process for a great firm in NY. The gentleman that sent the file to me was unable to process the file themselves using the new plugin from CADspan because their firm was running Internet Explorer 6 and the Plugin requires IE 7 or higher. I think the rest of the world is on IE 8 so this may be a limited problem.

I recently had issues working on a SketchUp file from a client. My snaps were not snapping to the edges of the model, consequently any new faces I created were floating just off the surface of the model. The view would also "jitter" as I orbited around the model.

I thought I would just muddle through it, but my CADSpan output was negatively affected so I needed to solve the problem.

Ensure your model is "water tight". I know I talk about this quite a bit on here, but this is key to printing a model. There are some tools to help "seal" a model, such as CADSpan, but the majority of the work should be done before sending your model through one of these programs in order the have the best possible resolution.

To do this we should focus on some of the usual suspects.
1) Walls meeting the roof. There are two places I often find problems here. See images below for illustration

1) Complete the drawing. I find that models that are half way through a redesign are the worst models to attempt to print because there are too many gray areas.

Materialise's STL editing software, magics, is one of the most robust packages I have ever used so I will not write a full tutorial, but I thought I would attempt a quick and dirty for prepping architectural models.
1) Import your STL

2) If you need to composite parts import them as well now and merge shells
tools/shells/merge parts
3) If you have processed in CADSpan you may need to rotate around the x axis by 90
tools/rotate
4) If you need to scale you can use any of the methods of scaling that magics has available.

I just figured out why I was having problems importing ADT data so I thought I would share it.

I now ALWAYS check the construct 3D solids box because not doing so will import all of the geometry as faces which jacks up the file size tremendously and makes the model less editable.

The next check-mark I have is the reason I have had problems upon import. Joining adjacent coplaner faces reduces the triangulation of objects, which makes the model a lot easier to review and edit. he problem is any ill formed geometry will be omitted.

If you draft the model for viz only and are then asked to get a print of it, there are likely going to be a variety of problems with getting your model in to a printer, but it is doable. The conversation on "how to adjust my model" is unfortunately fairly specific to the model at hand, but there are helpful best practices that can be found in many of the Books for the software you are using.

Today, Ladies and Gentleman, we will talk about the letter I.

Interiors

I hadn't though much about, or done much with, interiors for a while now, but I recently have had a few requests so I will delve in the the production briefly.

Tolerances: If you have your own printer and use it frequently, you probably already know what is do able and what is not, but interior applications pose a few new challenges because the thin interior walls are largely unsupported, especially in a cathedral ceiling situation.