SKETCHUP Tut--Round overs

Dave Richards

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Alright, I thought I'd dredge up an older drawing I did to show a method of simulating a round-overed edge on a table leg. The most obvious way of creating a round over would be to draw an arc on the end of the leg and use Push/Pull to remove the waste as if you were running a router bit along the edge. That works just fine but if you use the default 12 segments with the arc tool, you create an additional 12 faces and 35 edges. If you do that on all for corners of a leg, multiply those numbers by four. This is a sure way to bloat the file.

So, instead, try this.

roundover.jpg


Draw a line parallel to the corner edge on each of the joining faces. Place the new line an 1/8" or so away from the edge. The easiest way to do this is to draw construction lines parallel to that edge. Then while holding the Ctrl key, run the Eraser tool over the edge to soften it. Switch to the Shift key and run the Eraser tool over the two lines you drew to hide them.

The center leg in this drawing shows the result. The one on the right shows the effect of using the arc tool. Hard to tell them apart, isn't it? The technique of softening and hiding only adds two faces and five edges. Not nearly such a load for the video card.

BTW, adding the lines parallel to the edge create limits for the softening effect which is why we add them.
 
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Neat trick Dave. I guess the only real way to tell the difference between the two methods would be to look closely at the top/bottom corners, since those remain square...right?

- Marty -
 
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