Sketchup won't cut through object! HELP ME FAST PLEASE!

It seems from the first picture, the tiles are components/groups, that’s why when you try to cut it off you place the lines and shapes outside the components. Sometimes, you need to use other extension to be able to draw lines over any other curved or non-staright lines objects such as this roofing. See if nobody answered you then tell me to check that extension for you.

Regards,

As Cotty suggests, most modelers would probably use a texture in this situation.

However, if you want to use this component, you need to understand how components work. In particular, whatever you do to any one instance of a component also happens to every other instance. Since your roof consists of a row of twenty of these components, as soon as you start to cut the window out of one of them, the same cut will show in the other nineteen, which you clearly don’t want. Therefore, you have to make each of the instances that are cut out around windows unique (right-click > Make unique).

Second, you must invoke the Intersect command from inside the context of the tiles to cut them. Third, you should protrude the window forms all the way through the roof tiles before invoking Intersect since you want to cut all the way through.

You were ill-advised to make an urgent commitment to model the roof before understanding what’s involved.

-Gully

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This is a very tricky intersection. Sketchup’s native intersect most often fail due to two different tolerance issues. The first issue is related to scale and can be mitigated by scaling up the model. The second failure is more subtle; Sketchup allows faces to be non flat within a certain tolerance, the intersection however is (probably) computed for a single plane approximating the face which sometimes produces cut edges that doesn’t merge properly. The solution is to triangulate the non-flat faces.

I’ve made a script which tries to overcome both these issues and does to some extent (it’s by no means foolproof though), the experiments I’ve made with your model all worked. Just drop the script in your plugins folder. You can then find it under ‘Simple Cut’ in the plugins menu.

Here’s how to use the script:

  1. Scale everything up by a factor 50. This doesn’t matter for the script but it does matter when the cut edges are exploded into the roof (see 4).

  2. The script only works on pairs of groups. Turn you components into unique groups (explode + triple click + make group). Also, split the window cut out component into three different groups.

  3. Select a roof group and a cut out group and run the script.

  4. The resulting cut edges are placed in a new group. Select the cut edge group and paste it into place in the roof group. Explode the cut edge group. Hopefully this will result in a proper cut.

  5. Warning! This is not a ‘real’ script, it’s just an experiment. The script requires all groups to be unique otherwise it hangs. So, save often and make sure that entity info says ‘Group (1 in model)’ for all inputs to the script.

  6. Finally, the script is quite fast, a cut only takes a couple of seconds.

CUT.rb (11.1 KB)

KEN! Your response just made me happy but are you saying you exploded everything? I’m trying to do that and I still can’t delete any lines or anything. Can you please walk me through your methods please~

Nevermind oh my god THANK YOU KEN! YOU’RE AMAZING. IT WORKED. I could’ve sworn I tried exploding them. I think what I did last night was try to explode them all at once. But I did it individually and it worked. In the process of cutting out the holes now. THANK YOU SO MUCH KEN!

The tile roof component is comprised of >34,000 Edges and nearly17,000 Faces
That, in itself, is a “brick”… A mass of overly complex tiny geometry that will slow model performance.
Exploding all the tile roof components will only exacerbate the performance issue and bloat the file.

Here are the Model Info - Statistics for just one instance of the tile roof component:

Add my vote for texture image vs geometry for the tile roof.
Below is an example.
The tilling texture image was rather hastily crafted from a screen shot of the roof tile geometry in the model.

Here’s the tilling image 99 x 117 pixels:

-Geo

The reason I’m not using a texture is because I’m having the model 3D printed and I’ve seen textured prints and actual modeled roof prints and I can say that the roofs with actual geometry are much more aesthetically pleasing~

With this info, you add the need of a solid model, which will get another task…

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There’s just a few faces that need depth to them for the printing because I emailed Shapeways and they even mentioned they’d make changes if necessary so I’m super happy about that. Also in terms of performance issues, I’m running totally smooth as I have 64gb of ram to spend in Sketchup and that’s all boosted by a few SSDs and an overclocked 4.3ghz i7 4930k. Also using OpenGL within sketchup with 2 R9 280x’s.

It seems your concept of “running smooth” is different than mine.
The file name; AutoSave_AutoSave_AutoSave_AutoSave_AutoSave_Plantation-House.skp indicates it’s crashed no less than five times.

@Deranic
In the file you shared the tile roof components are positioned rather haphazardly.

After exploding them they will, sooner than later, meld into an inseparable tangle of raw geometry.
Creating a solid group from that will, like Cotty said, “get another task” (read impossible)

Maybe Shapeways can fix all that.
It might be wise to share a sample file with them before investing hours in a model that will not print.
Just ideas…

-Geo

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This is video on this subject , this was with plank . But its the same principal

Phil

I usually start my models on a late 2011 Mac Pro, thus the crashes. So after I got to the roof (which was insanely problematic as you can tell by the autosaves) I saved the file and went to working on it on my dedicated Windows based rig which is the one mentioned above (which I use mostly for video editing, but I still have Sketchup on it) I try to keep the 3D modeling applications on the Mac side of things but over these past few months as I’ve been tinkering around with Cinema4d and intensive plugins such as Realflow and such, I’m realizing that I’ll probably switch to an entire Windows based workflow as none of Apples workstation solutions seem to be capable of keeping up.

Deranic, you should have this in mind and try to make clean and light models because not all problems will be solvable with more hardware…

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Looking at Geo’s screenshot, I would guess that the tile component could be made with many less faces and edges, and, unless you are printing your house to full scale, no one would notice. Just getting rid of the 3D rounded edges would probably reduce the complexity by something like 80%. They will be smaller than the resolution of the 3D printer anyway.

Anssi

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Here’s an example for @Deranic to examine:

As for the Ridge / Hip Caps; Ah, there’s another modeling task.
Perhaps print them separately and apply them afterward.

-Geo

Here is an example for a much lighter component…

cotty_rooftile_component.skp (94.9 KB)

It’s possible to make a simple set of tiles that individually are not solids because they have missing surfaces, but when exploded together they will merge their geometry to become a solid…
It just needs some forethought…

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Yes, nice concept! (for both directions you will need to modify the sides too…)
And you will get more geometry after exploding, the “one face concept” can be made solid with 8 additional lines…

@Cotty
You are right about the sides using semi-solid 3d tiles… meaning tiles for left/right and central locations - 3*3 = 9 unique types !
I agree that your ‘skin’ plus extra added sides is probably the best solution…
Of course in reality if the tiles are forming a roof there will be beams, walls etc all needing to be added in a way that results in solid geometry in the final combo…

Thank you guys for your response.

Wo3Dan,

  • Painting the roof tile with the Paint Bucket obviously it looks just like painted, I want a more realistic roof tile for the perspective.
  • The roof tile could be any Spanish stile. It doesn’t have to be an specific one.
  • What I found “labor intensive” to modify is to cut the roof tile from 3D Warehouse because the are made of components. I am attaching one example of the roof that I was trying to adapt to my roof.
    CeramicRoofTiles.skp (217.2 KB)
    Please tell me, how you would use this roof tile to the shape of my roof.

Geo,

  • Wouldn’t the material image looks flat, same as using the paint bucket? I will give it a try anyway.
  • The shape of the roof is covering a hallway which is higher than the rest of the house’s roof.