Now that I have a plastic cup drawn, I want to print “+ Ɩ -” in the middle of the curved face that is perpendicular to the bridging strap that spans the middle hole. The attached picture might be worth a thousand words in trying to understand what I want to do.
I’ve found several references to this need on this forum but I’m still not getting it.
I have installed Chris Fullmer’s Shape Bender but I haven’t figured it out.
Can anyone help?
I sent you a private message.
So the setup for using Shape Bender is to set the component to be bent (the + | - in this case) so it is parallel to the red axis and it’s axes are aligned with the model axes. Then you need a straight line aligned with the component and a curve as the reference for bending. If you don’t want the bent component to be stretched or compressed, the curve for the bend reference needs to be the same length as the straight line reference. I figured out the angle of the arc required to get the desired length with ϴ=360/(C/s) where ϴ is the angle of the arc, C is the circumference of the outer rim of the cup and s is the length of the straight line.
After getting the bent component, move it into place on the cup, explode the bent text component, Ctrl+X to cut it to the clipboard, open the cup group for editing, Edit>Paste in place to paste the text geometry into the groups. While the text is selected, hold Shift and also select the outside surface of the cup. Right click on it and choose Intersect Faces>With Selection. Then erase the edges of the text that stick out and delete the faces skinning the text. Right click on a white face and choose Orient Faces.
@DaveR has given you a great setup for using Shapebender, but if you just want a quick rough and reading version I’d intersect the shapes to get the outline then use Fredo’s Joint pushpull for depth.
Another option? ThomThom’s true bend and solid tools subtract.
Bend plus and minus partially into face and subtract it.
Thank you to all for the advice and for the different options.
Probably just as important for me, is to enhance my skills in working and manipulating Sketchup tools and coordination with my mouse movements. Explrirng these options will give me great opportunity to develop those skills
You can also use VisuHole.
define your + | - shape as the stencil. The curved surface does not have to be a cylinder. You can also configure the depth for the carving.
I know it can be done. I’ve seen it done with Shape Bender, with Joint PushPull, with True Bend, and with VisuHole.
I’ve even been tutored by DaveR on using Shape Bender who took me through to the final product.
But now I’m trying to use Shape Bender to do the same thing by myself and I’m not getting good results.
I drew a solid model.
test - solid group.skp (245.4 KB)
I then used the 3D Text Tool to select the symbols for printing as seen in this jpg, with the vertical bar being U=007C from the Tahoma font.
On selecting the Place button, the text component appears flat on the xy plane, where it is supposed to be parallel to the red axis and with its axes aligned with the model axes. Since it was flat on the xy plane I rotated it so that it was in the xz plane (was that right?).
I drew a straight line equal in length to the text component (5.1724").
I calculated the circumference of the model to be 28.95" and from that calculated the degrees of arc necessary to correspond to the length of the text component to avoid distortion. I determined that angle to be 64 degrees.
degrees = 360/(circumference/ line length) = 360/(28.95/5.1724)=64
Then to Shape Bender. The text component was selected, and then the line corresponding to the length of the text component was selected (resulting in Start End labels appearing at each end). Then the 64 degree arc was selected and things started to go south.
test -bent text attached to model.skp (265.1 KB)
The bent component looked distorted and toggling the up/down arrows didn’t improve much but it did get the text into the proper sequence.
Following DaveR’s instructions (to the letter I hope),
So the setup for using Shape Bender is to set the component to be bent (the + | - in this case) so it is parallel to the red axis and it’s axes are aligned with the model axes. Then you need a straight line aligned with the component and a curve as the reference for bending. If you don’t want the bent component to be stretched or compressed, the curve for the bend reference needs to be the same length as the straight line reference. I figured out the angle of the arc required to get the desired length with ϴ=360/(C/s) where ϴ is the angle of the arc, C is the circumference of the outer rim of the cup and s is the length of the straight line.
After getting the bent component, move it into place on the cup, explode the bent text component, Ctrl+X to cut it to the clipboard, open the cup group for editing, Edit>Paste in place to paste the text geometry into the groups. While the text is selected, hold Shift and also select the outside surface of the cup. Right click on it and choose Intersect Faces>With Selection. Then erase the edges of the text that stick out and delete the faces skinning the text. Right click on a white face and choose Orient Faces. I did get symbols attached to the curved face of the model but they don’t look good.
Here’s the final result.
test -finished model after Solid Inspector2.skp (289.6 KB)
PS did I put too many skp files into this question
I think the reason for the distortion is that the straight component is longer than the arc you used so the bent component is compressed in the horizontal direction.
Also, the location of the straight reference line relative to the component is important. When I added the straight line reference, I placed it under the center of the straight component. It looks like you might have placed it at the back edge of the straight component instead. Between the short length of the arc and the placement of the straight line, you wind up with a lot of distortion.
Considering how thick the extrusion in your example is, you probably don’t want the reference line to be centered unless you want the text to pierce the side of the cup completely.
As for too many SKP files, maybe you did. Still, I figured it out. 
Here’s how I set up for Shape Bender. Before I did the set up, though, I modified the text. In your image the + and - look to be closer to the | and the - looks to be the same length as the +. I also fixed the component by removing the gluing properties and setting the component axes so the blue runs up.
The straight reference line is positioned slightly in from the back. Since the radius of the curved part will match the cup radius at that point, the recessed text will be 0.1 deep. The arc length matches the length of the straight line and straight text.
And here you can see how it ends up.
Your comments in the first reply this morning made a big difference in my models.
I’ll play around with this a bit more, taking your comments in the second reply into consideration too.
Thanks, you’ve been a big help.
I haven’t been able to figure out how to remove the gluing properties (and why you’d want to do that) and same thing for changing component axes so that blue runs up (isn’t that the default?)
Do I have to declare the 3D test symbols as a component or does component have some other meaning in this case>
Wanna look together?
Yes, I’ll try to keep up
Do you provide an access code?
I sent a PM.
