Cretan Labyrinth Hill

thingiverse

A remake of the Cretan Labyrinth 3D model standing flat on a surface gives me the opportunity to practice detail-oriented skills in SketchUp. Print Settings Printer Brand: MakerBot Printer: MakerBot Replicator (5th Generation) Rafts: Yes Supports: No Resolution: High Infill: Default Post-Printing The finished product is fairly rough, and a small ball bearing won't roll down the channel. Dropping water at the top with a syringe didn't work either; it wouldn't flow down the channel easily. Perhaps scaling the design to have a sharper slope or starting with the "tall" version of the original might help. How I Designed This I imported the original Cretan Labyrinth 3D STL file into SketchUp using the SketchUpSTL plugin. Unfortunately, it lost many of the finer details, especially on the inside of two of the sharpest curves. Using Soften Edges and manual clicking, I removed the vertical faces from the model to delete the bottom track. Then, I brought those faces back in, moved them down, and intersected them with a flat plane to create the existing walls and bottom. Next, I repaired all the mistakes that SketchUpSTL made during import. Since SketchUp created two faces for each tiny face repair and deleting one was tedious, I exported the object as 3DS format instead of STL and ran it through NetFabb Basic to remove duplicate faces with a script in the repair view. Afterward, the object became solid and printable, resulting in this final product. If I had the original model's source files and the application used to create them, things would have been much easier; however, this was an educational experience nonetheless.