Preface

3D printing is an amazing technology and printing hardware is easier to own than ever before. While there are many other resources that cover the general process of 3D printing, this book is the ultimate guide to creating models for 3D printing from SketchUp.

Once we have established a basic understanding of how SketchUp is used in the 3D printing workflow, we will go through the steps to create a print-ready model using only SketchUp. Following that, we will cover how to use SketchUp to modify existing 3D files, and discover some additional tools that can be used to make SketchUp an even more powerful modeling tool. You’ll learn how to transform 2D images into 3D printable solids, how to create multi-part prints that can be assembled without the use of fasteners or glue, and how to make sure your model, whether designed from scratch or assembled from pre-existing geometry, is ready to be made real via your own 3D printer.

By the end of this book, you should be able to generate 3D print-ready models from SketchUp.