| Manifolds in Sketchup [message #2831] Wed, 04 February 2009 18:03 UTC |
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My model is being rejected for not being a manifold object. I've watched the video and thought I had it fixed, but I'm still having troubles.
Is anyone willing to help me or point me in the right direction?
Thanks!
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| Re: Manifolds in Sketchup [message #2865 is a reply to message #2831 ] Fri, 06 February 2009 03:52 UTC |
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it might be the reversed-normal faces (which shows up blue in sketchup)
flip them so they face out
non-manifold faces could also be hiding where there are duplicated faces
you can use blender to see where they are
see
http://www.shapeways.com/tutorials/errors
3.fixing your file
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| Re: Manifolds in Sketchup [message #2942 is a reply to message #2831 ] Wed, 11 February 2009 14:42 UTC |
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Hi Josh,
I do all my modelling in Sketchup, so I have lots of practice of what to look for  . In your case (in addition to all the blue walls that can be fixed by selecting them, right clicking, and choosing reverse faces) you have some 'extra' walls-inside-walls that will cause manifold issues. In particular, at the base where it meets the rest of the structure there are several extra walls on the 'inside' in an area that should be completely solid. Sketchup is a little prone to creating extra internal walls when two objects are intersected, so you have to be careful to clean up the area manually. If you have trouble finding the spot let me know I and will take some screenshots for you. A helpful way to work with these areas is to take large external walls of your model, such as the square at the very bottom of the base, hide them, and then look for any extra geometry that seems to be cluttering up what should be a smooth blue interior. Extra lines that don't correspond to any external features are a dead giveaway and need to be looked into. Also, when looking at the blue interior of a solid model, there should be passageways into all other parts of the model which are physically attached. Give it a run and let me know if you can find everything.
sincerely,
eMansipater
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| Re: Manifolds in Sketchup [message #2948 is a reply to message #2942 ] Wed, 11 February 2009 22:24 UTC |
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I aslso seem to have that sketchup/ unforgivable manifold problem. I've tried the model skinning plugin ect. but it still gets rejected. if anyone was willing to take a look and see why mine keeps getting rejected I would be grateful.
P.S. the model is that of a prop ship for an extremely low budget web scifi show i'm working on. I wanted to see if I could 3d print it for an ok cost before I hand made it. anyways thanks in advance
Johnny
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| Re: Manifolds in Sketchup [message #2954 is a reply to message #2948 ] Thu, 12 February 2009 03:34 UTC |
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Hi Johnny,
Took a quick look at your model and I can see it has some extra internal walls, too. To get you started, the walls from the side cabins extend into the solid material, and several components of the legs also extend into the interior of the model. To resolve manifold issues you want to remove all extra geometry from within the portion intended to be solid. Let me know if you can find them and I'll do some screenshots for you if you can't.
Sincerely,
eMansipater
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| Re: Manifolds in Sketchup [message #2962 is a reply to message #2954 ] Thu, 12 February 2009 15:08 UTC |
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fantastic I'll get to work on it!, now do I still need to make the step of bringing it into blender and removing duplicate verticies?
-Johnny
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| Re: Manifolds in Sketchup [message #2963 is a reply to message #2962 ] Thu, 12 February 2009 15:31 UTC |
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My own export process involves no extra editing in any other programs, only conversions and rescalings. So if you have a solid, manifold object in Sketchup you should be fine without any further anything.
Sincerely,
eMansipater
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| Re: Manifolds in Sketchup [message #2966 is a reply to message #2963 ] Thu, 12 February 2009 18:44 UTC |
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awsome, well heres my model that I'v cleaned up, removed extra material. I'm not seeing anything inside that should be giving me my manifold errors, yet its still giving me those errors. I'm just exporting them directly to collada through sketchup, could that be my problem?
anyways thanks again
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| Re: Manifolds in Sketchup [message #3705 is a reply to message #2831 ] Wed, 01 April 2009 19:31 UTC |
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I also use Sketchup and once I've checked my objects' faces I simpy export the model as .mkz (the Google Earth format).
After that I extract the contents of the mkz file (since it's a disguised archive) and take the .dae file to upload it to My Designs. Works every time!
Added bonus is that I don't need the Pro version to export my models.. 
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| Re: Manifolds in Sketchup [message #4803 is a reply to message #3705 ] Sun, 07 June 2009 20:48 UTC |
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Meshlab is a REALLY useful tip. Not least because it lets you see how the mesh actually appears when it is exported.
However - this may also be of help.
When viewing in meshlab I noticed that there were a LOT of mysterious faces that I hadn't put in the mesh in sketchup - usually spanning across several planes.
This was because I was doing the usual sketchup thing of not having edges seperating my shapes so they looked like one single face - but they aren't behind the scenes of course.
For example: in a face that looks like this:
___| |__
_______
It will (possibly) cause manifold errors
to fix this add an edge on the join with the line tool so it looks like this:
___|_|___
________
Make sense?
[Updated on: Sun, 07 June 2009 20:49 UTC]
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| Re: Manifolds in Sketchup [message #4804 is a reply to message #4803 ] Sun, 07 June 2009 22:26 UTC |
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Oh, and btw - this won't always fix things, but it's a VERY good way of limiting your problems.
Another method is to use something like Wings3D
Wings3D is free, and it's a subsurface modeller. One bonus of genuine subsurface modellers (most aren't, they operate on a the simpler "cage" which then affects the subsurface) is that they HAVE TO deal in correct manifold faces and vertexes.
Simply importing a model and exporting it will fix any errors that sketchup (which is prone to producing completely messed up manifold models) introduces.
That said - I'm convinced there are problems in Shapeways checking.
According to Meshlab I have NO manifold issues in my model, but it is still rejected. Annoying, and does not reflect well on the service... 
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| Re: Manifolds in Sketchup [message #8191 is a reply to message #2831 ] Thu, 10 December 2009 06:28 UTC |
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Apologies for necro-posting, but this does seem to be thread to post this.
Obviously, I got a non-manifold error when trying to upload to Shapeways.
I watched the "how to fix manifolds" video (which assumes I know my way around Blender), read this thread, and tried to fix it on my own.
I saved the file as .dae and opened it in meshlab. I ran "Remove non-manifold faces" and "Remove non-manifold vertices," and nothing disappeared. Then I saved it as .stl.
I downloaded Blender, and after I stopped laughing at how incredibly complicated and non-intuitive the user interface was, I studied the online documentation enough to find "Remove Doubles" (No doubles! Yay!) and "Non-Manifold." When I chose "Non-Manifold," every single line lit up yellow. I checked the data at the top of the screen to see how many non-manifolds I had...and discovered that I have no non-non-manifolds.
It's just one big mass of non-manifolds. Yet it looks tight and clean in Sketchup. And it looks good in meshlab, although about half the surface is black and the rest is gray, whatever that means. I feel like I'm being a lazy noob here, but even after cleaning the file up as carefully as I know how (I used X-ray mode and removed every hidden, extraneous line), I'm getting the same error. I've used meshlab to save it in .x3d format, as well, with the same results.
I would be extremely grateful if someone could take a peek at this and offer some advice.
Many thanks in advance!
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| Re: Manifolds in Sketchup [message #8489 is a reply to message #8191 ] Tue, 22 December 2009 07:10 UTC |
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I'm new at this myself, but one thing I noticed is that your model has a lot of reversed normals.
Each polygon in a model has an "outward" side and an "inward" side. "Reversed normals" means some of the polygons in your model have their "inward" side facing out. In Sketchup the sides are color coded gray and white, but you've applied a silver texture to your model, and that's "painted over" the color coding so you can no longer see it.
Go up to the View tab in the top menu, scroll down to "Face Style", and select "monochrome". This will hide the silver texture so that you can see the color coding. To fix an inverted polygon, right click on the surface you want to fix with the arrow tool, and select "reverse faces".
I'm pretty sure that gray is the "outside" face color in Sketchup, and white is the "inside". That's the way the program tries to orient things by default, at least.
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| Re: Manifolds in Sketchup [message #8492 is a reply to message #8489 ] Tue, 22 December 2009 08:11 UTC |
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Thanks for the reply. I've actually gotten a pretty good grip on the manifold situation now, so I should have written my own follow-up. It helps to know that each face has a "right" side and a "wrong" side. 
I would only note that white is the side that should be facing outward, unless I'm radically mistaken.
Saving the file as .dae, opening it in meshlab (yes, there's a Mac OS version), and running the filters "Remove Duplicate Vertex," "Remove Duplicate Faces," "Remove Non Manifold Faces," and "Remove Non Manifold Vertices" seems to clean things up pretty well. However, I find that the latest version of meshlab (1.2.2) crashes frequently (at least on my MacBook). Beyond cleaning things up, I don't use meshlab for anything. "messlab" might be a better name for it. (It doesn't even have an undo function!)
Blender is just insane. I admire anyone who can make sense of it, but it's pretty much useless to me.
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