Intersect With Model Thing

I'd meant to express my thanks, Dave. I love these little tidbits that you put together for us. I'm trying very hard to come up with a way to encourage people to follow your lead on this. Unfortunately, I don't touch SU more than twice a month as of late so I'm not as proficient as many and have little to offer at this time. I WILL learn this stuff and begin discovering my own little tricks, which I'll gladly share as well. :)

Thank you for leading the charge and adding to our collective skills :)
 
I meant to try this out and forgot. Laptop in the shop's video card is the pits so I can't do it here.

How would you get rid of that line right at the edge of the lambs tongue or can you?
 
Travis, you could hide the line with Shift+Eraser butsince there's still a sharp transition between the chamfer and the lambs tongue, there would still be an edge. You could certainly change the profile so there is a smoother transition between the straight and the curved parts and use Ctrl+Eraser to soften it. Softening the edge in the profile as shown would result in some distortion that wouldn't be very nice.

When you get a chance try it and see what you think.

Jason, glad you like this stuff. I'll have to see if I can figure out some other little tidbits like this one.
 
Yea I am thinking Dave, Thinking I got to try this. ;)

Last night I was trying to draw a lattic panel for a wine bottle rack and install it inside the cabinet I was working on. I got it close enough for show and tell but man was that a chore with all those mitered ends.
 
How do you draw the tongue? Do I use arcs, bezier, what?

Yes.

I believe when I drew that, I used the Bezier tool. It was easier to create the continuous S curve. You might find it easier when drawing the S using the Bezier tool to start with a larger plane. That can help you keep the S curve 2D.
 
RE: intersect

Does sketchup not have a chamfer tool? I don't use it at all and it strikes me as curious how much you had to do to make this. Also can you push/pull a profile in both directions at once?
 
Rob, there is a chamfer plugin available but you can't do the lamb's tongue with a chamfer. If all you want is a chamfer, though, you would simply strike a diagonal across the end and push away the waste.

Even the lamb's tongue is very quick to draw. You'd only have to draw it once. After that you can copy it as needed.

Keep in mind that SketchUp is a sketching tool. It isn't a CAD application. It's also free. It was designed for architects to use as a digital version of sketching on a napkin. The pro version will output files that can then be opened in a CAD application to do the technical work. Even the pro version is only $500. It used to be that upgrading to the next version cost $90 but the last upgrade was free.

BTW, when are you going to post a perspective view of the Solidworks drawing you showed us the other day?
 
Brad, this was done before Version 6 and with the new version came a new term for "Construction Geometry", namely "Guides".

So, in the second part of the lower image in my first post, you can see guide lines that were laid out to help me get the profile oriented correctly. this is both for vertical position as well as angle. Think of Guides as the pencil or marking knife lines you might use for layout on wood except they are easier to get rid of when you're finished with them. I set a shortcut for Delete Guides so a single keystroke erases all of them.

Does that help?
 
Glenn, I'm glad to hear that.

Here's something to add to your thinking. Remember that you can drag guide lines off any other line whether that is an edge, an axis or another guide. This makes it a simple matter to locate points in space. If you also add the Protractor tool into the mix, you can add guides at angles to other lines.

Consider the possibilities of this. Let's say you're designing a cabinet with a hinged door. You know where the door needs to be when it is closed as well as where you want it to be when it is open. Maybe the door needs to clear some trim as it opens. You can use guides to locate the hinge line by working off the two locations of the door.

there's all sorts of applications for guides and since they aren't part of the geometry of the model, you can draw them in and delete them at will without affecting the model.

I use guides to lay out the limits of a piece or to work out some dimensions. Since SketchUp's inference engine can see them, it gives tools something to snap to so they can facilitate moves or rotations. They make it simple to lay out the limits of arcs for radiused edges. They also make it easier to draw Bezier curves. Especially parabolic arcs.

Guides can also be copied like regular geometry and you can make linear or radial arrays of guides so you can layout geometry that might be repeated if you like.

They do start to clutter the view a bit so it is good to delete them periodically. That shortcut is handy for that.
 
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