I have two lines that perfectly intersect inside a rectangle with all 90 degree angles, and yet I cannot pull up or “auto-fold” the vertex into a straight pyramid. I believe this is a pretty standard action so either I’m doing something wrong or this is a limitation of the engine and I have to use a different workflow?
Hidden geometry is on and in the video you can see me double check at the end that all of the lines are straight and meet in the middle.
I would greatly appreciate anyone who can tell me how to pull up this pyramid into an equally sided one. View My Video
Try turning the whole thing so the face is perpendicular to the red axis. Then pull that point out. The tool naturally wants to be on axis and you don’t have a good references for pulling it out in the desired direction.
Alternatively you could place a guideline to follow at the correct angle.
By the way, that’s probably an easier way to create the diamond than I showed you.
If you dont want to rotate your model to correct the alignment, you can use the improved inference engine in 2016 to find the direction using a perpendicular edge as a reference.
(After resting on the edge with the move tool to make the reference connection,
I select the DOWN ARROW key to force the inference.
You can see the edge glow when it is referenced)
Hmmmmm, so even though I’m using the green axis to show I’m pulling straight, the inference engine wants to also pull toward or on one of the main axis?
I’ll try to turn the whole thing as you say.
It seems like a problem to workflow to me, but maybe it’s a limitation.
I think you misunderstand what the inference colors mean. In your video, the green inference color does NOT communicate that you are pulling straight. The green color is communicating a direction parallel to the green axis. Since your model face was not aligned perpendicular to the green axis, when you used the green inference to guide you, you did not pull it in a perpendicular direction
You guys were right of course. It works much better if aligned correctly with the axis. A useful tip for any new people like me following… the plug-in (Center on origin) and (Add Centerpoint) are extremely useful in quickly aligning an object with the main axis.
If you have to rotate a round object perfectly along or to an axis, I find it easier to use the “add center point” before I pick the rotate tool so I can rotate directly on the center of the round object. Then if you have guidelines or drawn lines to align, it’s much easier.
I’m sure there is a shortcut for you pro’s but it works for me.
For something like this thing you’re drawing, you should do what I shwed you and start at the origin. That way you don’t have to move it to the origin later.
But sometimes I just use “center on origin” because it will place the 3d model directly in the middle of the origin instead of on top of it. I use it as a way to place a guideline directly in the center of an object.
completed… it looks awkward because I’m limited to only making two rows of diamonds because the whole thing can only be 4 or 5 mm high and 3d printing can only handle about .5 to 1mm resolution.
I will try this method on a finer detailed knurled knob to make sure the effect I have is correct.
One day I may have to try solid works because it seemed pretty interesting how they make a knurled or checker pattern using “helixes”. But I’m really enjoying sketchup more now that you have helped me learn the basics.
That looks good, Rick. If you remember, the diamonds I drew were turned so the sides are diagonal. and I’m glad I was able to help. I want you to try making one like this next
You could use helices to create the knurling in SketchUp. I contemplated showing you that way but decided it was easier to do what I showed you because you could work out even spacing more easily
What you drew is easy and you don’t need to trim any of the units but of course it doesn’t represent the pattern created by a knurler. On the other hand, maybe you don’t want the pattern created by a knurler either.
I’m almost done with the diagonal pattern. This was a good project for a beginner because for accomplishing this so far I learned a lot more about inferencing and placing objects precisely where you want them, rotating, etc. It’s crazy but good.
I have one final question for this project. In needing to precisely auto-fold like we discussed before, I have to rotate my models in order to allow for the straight pulling or auto folding of geometry.
But if my object is a component, the axis for reference is the awkwardly bounding box axis for the component which is never centered.
So what I have to do is explode my component every time I need to have the object perfectly centered or lined up with the axis is I want to auto-fold or pull geometry straight.
Is there a way to center the component’s bounding box axis or whatever you call it’s own axis?
You can move the component’s axes as needed. Right click on the component and choose Change Axes. The set the location of the origin, the red axis direction and then the green. Blue takes care of itself.
You can use some crossing guidelines to locate where you want the origin to be. Set the Face Style to X-ray or Wireframe so you can see the crossing guidelines if they intersect inside the component.
You might also find that you don’t need to do anything with the component’s axes. You could just set guidelines to follow. The Move tool cursor will follow the guideline just fine.
That’s one reason, anyway. Make sure you delete them when they’ve served their purpose. There’s no point in cluttering your drawing space with unneeded guides. If you remember, I mentioned I have set up a keyboard shortcut for Edit>Delete Guides. I use it often.
Thanks, good tip on keyboard shortcut. I want to start setting up more preferences like that.
I’m struggling so much less now that I know how to place items precisely. It took me a while to realize how to make models “snap” into place when you want them to and not when you don’t want them to. I have used guides before for simpler projects. The only reason I didn’t want to use guides to make the 3d diamond diagonal pattern, is that when you made guides, you were drawing in two different planes at the same time. That was a little overwhelming for me. I sometimes draw in complete 2d parallel projection mode as much as I can. But I did notice that as my models gets more complete, it’s a faster workflow to stay in perspective mode and orbit and do my work faster. It just took me a while to get to used to how to use the inference engine.
