Hello everyone, thanks to everyone’s generosity, especially DaveR, I have gotten much further on my sailfish ring construction. I also want to thank Box, Gully, and the multitude of others that I’m sorry if I didn’t mention. I am really loving sketchup.
But to stay on topic, my question now is if there are any strategies on how to close the holes I am getting after I joint push pull these sailfish faces. In order to have the correct contours, I thought a joint push pull of the fish while flat will give me exactly what I am looking for. However, because of the curves or all that fin geometry, I get holes. (scaling the model bigger, even makes more holes).
I turned on hidden geometry, and drew lines that should have been creating faces but am having trouble closing all of them. I tried solid inspector version 2 but I’m sure you already know it won’t be able to close these crazy holes.
My gut tells me that I might have to find another way instead of using joint push pull but I don’t know how else to get these correct contours. Keeping a solid fish after the radial array and then trying to push pull in towards the ring will not be right because the edge of the fish as it wraps around will remain too thick while middle is thinner.
DaveR suggested I make triangles but this only closed some of them.
Are there any advanced methods or strategies I can try?
I’m attaching the file that has the sailfish flat if you want to see what I am starting with before I joint push pull. (just note that I delete the small piece of bottom fin that is separate to make joint push pull work. It seems that you can’t select more than one face for it to work right). I am inputting the number 40 when using joint push pull. ring experiment.skp (2.9 MB)
It’s not so much triangles as Join the Dots.
You need to draw lines that correspond with the end points of the hidden geometry. You can then smooth the lines once the faces are created.
Sometimes you only need a few but other times you’ll need to stitch them all. it depends on the amount of curve.
I had a bit of a look at your model and it would be best if you did a bit of a rethink.
Design your main ring with segments in a multiple of 6, this will allow you to split it equally. Currently the sailfish motif isn’t spaced perfectly around the ring.
You can then work on one sailfish component and when complete array it to form the full ring, without having to repeat yourself 6 times.
Also, JPP may not be the perfect tool in this case.
Here I have used Tig’s Extrude edges by vector, then copied the face to complete the shape. Removing the inner face will allow it to form a solid. I haven’t shown splitting the whole ring and making an array, If you don’t understand what I mean I can make another gif if necessary.
You caught me just going to bed, so here is a quick one.
I used 36 segments so six is a sixth. You can then decorate one to your hearts content and the others will be the same.
Once there are all put back together the edges can disappear and it become one continuous ring again.
I think that joining the dots may be a long way to do it; If you can form the shape on a ‘flat’ surface, then drape it over (or project it onto) the curved face it would probably be a whole lot easier.
Thanks, Ill check that for future reference, but I’m getting much further using Box’s method. The Tig’s tool “extrude edges by vector” seems to push/pull without making any hole’s in the first place. So I’m just going to try that.
Thank you everyone, especially Dave and Box. I found out that I should “weld” the lines, even if they appear clean or I don’t get clean faces. So perhaps, the all of the methods will work as long as I remember to do that. So far, I’m really liking sketchup.
