RE: [rp-ml] SketchUp on Google - is this the start of the Personal3D CAD revolution?

Adrian,

I would not agree with your statement that it is trivial to convert VRML to
STL in the general sense. VRML has a great deal of information that is not
relevant to stl and nothing in the VRML spec or most implementations of it
that require or suggest solid geometry.

Yes, it is easy to convert the triangle mesh data, (and not that hard to
convert primatives like spheres, etc) to STL but you have to look at what
goes in to that mesh translation to know if it will be 3d printable.

Sketchup is not a solid modeler. That is one of the reasons that it is
lightweight and fast. While it is possible to draw "buildable" geometry
using Sketchup, you have to be careful about how you construct your objects.
In the general sense it is not possible to RP data from Sketchup without
either considering RP while you draw or using 3rd party tools. We use
Magics and CADspan (shameless plug for our program) extensively for this
purpose in our SB.

Charles Overy
LGM

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-rp-ml@rapid.lpt.fi [mailto:owner-rp-ml@rapid.lpt.fi]On
> Behalf Of Adrian Bowyer
> Sent: Tuesday, May 09, 2006 5:17 PM
> To: rp-ml@rapid.lpt.fi
> Subject: Re: [rp-ml] SketchUp on Google - is this the start of the
> Personal3D CAD revolution?
>
>
> Quoting Osbornmail@aol.com:
>
> > Have you seen this?
> >
> > _http://sketchup.google.com/_ (http://sketchup.google.com/)
> >
> > After so many previous posts about the potential of a 3D
> fabbing / RM / etc.
> > revolution [given enough widespread use of a free, easy to use 3D CAD
> > programme] it looks very much like the people at Google have
> designs on your
> > designs....
> >
> > What do we think? Will this catch on or are they crazy? Given
> the success to
> > date of Calendar and Gmail maybe it's worth keeping an eye on.
>
> Yup. We should all bombard them with requests for STL output. (Though
> it already does VRML, which is trivial to convert to STL, of course.)
>
> Yours
>
> Adrian
>
> http://staff.bath.ac.uk/ensab
> http://reprap.org
>
Received on Thu May 11 22:39:40 2006