Hello all, newbie here (SU Make V17.2.2555 64-bit)so please bear with me and the long winded question.
I’m drawing a small 4’ x 8’ utility trailer I built years ago just as an exercise in Sketchup.
The perimeter frame rails are 2 x 3 x 3/16 rectangular tubing with the 3" dimension vertical. The bunks (crossmembers) are 2 x 2 x 3/16 angle spaced at roughly 16 or so inches c/c and are 1" down from the top surface of the tubing to allow for the use of 1" decking and to keep it flush to the top of the tubing. The frame rails being tubing, have a radiused corner which brings me finally to my question.
How to I place a layout line down 1" from the top of the tubing that I can snap the top surface of the angle to to get an accurate placement. Since the corner of the tubing is radiused, I don’t have a sharp or defined corner to snap from.
I have no doubt there is a simple solution but it escape me. Hopefully I’ve attached a screenshot…Mike
Hi Dave, thanks for the reply but I don’t understand how that helps, there’s still no corner to snap a reference line from. I.E. in this screenshot what would I snap from to drop[ a line 1" down vertically on the surface of the tube.
What am I missing …M
Hi Chris,
I was thinking of going that route but I was hoping there’d be a way without having to create extraneous geometry. I know, not a big deal to delete it after I’m done and it’s not earth shattering.
Thanks for the reply, all suggestions gratefully accepted…M
Personally, I don’t have a problem making lots of guidelines at any moment, but I can see doing it without them. It may seem inelegant because it still takes three moves (with the arrow keys for constraint each time), but it works.
Align top face to top face vertically only (blue, up arrow + inference)
Align end face to side face horizontally only (red, right arrow + inference)
Drop the whole cross bar by 1" vertically only (blue, up arrow + type 1")
Step 1 and 2 can be combibed into one single step since you want to position your object point somewhere on the vertical face, the ultimate target face.
(forget about guides in this situation, they often make looking at your model confusing.)
grab object at a top endpoint like you did.
move/hover the object over the vertical face of the tube and now press and hold shift, keeping the object On(vertical)Face
move cursor to somewhere On(top)Face of the tube and let go of the mouse.
slide the object down and type 1" [Enter]
p.s. this may look like beeing more steps but that is only due to trying to explain without messing things up. It is about what could be done in SketchUp taking advantage of combined inferencing.
Ok, tried all methods suggested so again thanks for all the replies.
I like the guides, call me old fashioned but in this instance I’ll use the 1" dropped guide as well as vertical guides to place the bunks where I want since they’re not evenly spaced so I can’t use the multiple evenly spaced copy option
I find Chris’ method easier but I’m still working at inferencing. Once I’m more consistent using inferencing I think Box’ method will be a bit faster.
Using RtCool’ method is easy too, it’d be a good method if I only wanted to place one entity and didn’t want a guide for other things.
Thanks for the help guys…Mike
If you’re looking for a reference edge, just draw an independent line out in space on the axis you need, Use this line for your reference. I usually just draw simple cube which gives me all axis references.
With the tape measure click on the edge with the axis you want, drag the resulting reference line to wherever you need it, Your guideline reference need not be on the object you’re working on, they can come from anywhere in the model.
Here’s the .pdf version when I had originally drawn it up in Turbocad over 12 years ago. I don’t even have a version of TC to open the original .TCW files LOL.
If you’re interested in an actual picture, I’m going to untarp it tomorrow or Friday and bring it in the garage to go over it.
My main use now is hauling around an 1100L water tank to fil my daughters well with an occasional load of fill or topsoil for me.
I was going to build a tandem so I could haul two tanks but the cost of material is wayy to high…Mike
…M
