I think the problem you are having is caused by the fact that the profile used in the arch portion is not and can not be the same as the level portion. Look closely, doesn’t it look a bit larger?.
Here’s a youtube that might give some insight on your work.
Shep
@Shep I’m not sure what you mean… In my video, you see me follow the line around the corner, and carefully over the arch. By that I mean that the profile shape/size does not change.
I think I must misunderstand you,
Thank you for the video, I watched it. It’s definitely in the same ballpark as what I’m doing, the difference obviously being he’s going round a corner and up at flat angle, rather than an arc. The vid could be handy for future ref so I’ve fav’d it.
Maybe you just cannot followMe around a flat corner and then an arc.
Iirc, the way I did it before , it was a complete fudge. ----I followMe’d around the corner. But I moved a copy of the profile up to the centre point on top of the arch. I then followMe’d THAT back down to the flat level. This overlapped the two shapes and I painfully went in and erased a TONNE of excess lines and surfaces sticking out.
That example was a bit easier? Because the arch I was following around was much shallower and the profile shape was also a lot simpler.
I’ve just tried doing that same approach on my current example and after the overlap it becomes clear that the two are not intersected well at all. (Lots of gaps and stuff).
There must be a proper way of doing this…
Illustration:
You could give something like this a try. There was a bit too much cleanup to record a gif but I think you’ll get the idea.
This requires some intersecting and keeping the followme face perpendicular to the path. Also a good idea to keep these paths and faces in separate groups.
I’m surprised no one has mentioned the importance of the location of the path relative to the profile. In this case, all the examples show the path located at the bottom of the profile which creates the gaps and overlaps you’re seeing and that @Shep is trying to obviate with his separate Follow Me operations.
The simplest fix is to put the path in the right location relative to the profile.
Here I’ve set up two examples. The lower one is what has been used so far here. The upper one was created using Offset with the height of the molding profile as the offset distance. In reality I would draw the arc in the path instead of using Offset.
And the results after Follow Me. The bottom one needs a bunch of attention while the top one is ready to go with no clean up required.
That’s it! Perfect solution!
Thanks for the advice! I’ll post a screenshot to show you how its going.
Keep in mind that you could refine the path which i didn’t do in the screen shots due to limited time at the moment.
Followme creates a miter based on the bisector of the angle between the edges where they meet at a corner. If the angle is less than 180 degrees, its bisector forms acute (<90 degrees) angles with the two edges. If the angle is greater than 180 degrees, the bisected half-angles are obtuse (>90 degrees). In the attached diagram, the green edges represent an edge of the path (long line) and two possible placements of the profile relative to the corner. Similarly, the red edges represent the path and possible placements of the profile.
As you can see, when the half-angles are acute, the profile goes past the miter line and has to be trimmed back. Followme can’t always figure out how to do the trimming cleanly, as can be seen in @DaveR’s illustrations, particularly when the thin part of the profile tries to follow the acute angle. It causes the wide part to swing well past the miter.
But when the half-angles are obtuse, the extrusion must actually be extended beyond the natural end of the edge. This makes it much easier for followme to figure out the intersection.
Edit: only an ex-engineer could create or like a diagram like that 
Hi all, thanks for the continuing help. I’m starting to see the error of my ways ---- and begin to regret not group things and making components as well! (Putting the different chambers of the monestary together is proving tricky!)
Anyway, a question about the dome roof(s).
I’ve created the ideal dome shape, and used follow me to create numerous extrudes (around the circumference), but what I need to do is create a serious of vertical designs (which again, feature all the way around the dome circumference).
so far, I’ve used the move/copy tool to create multiple stacks around a cylinder, but those were just flat blocks.
this time round im wanting to create features which follow the contour of the dome’s curve. --its the first proper tricky curved surface part of this model I’ve come across.
Can I do this without plugins?
this is what i need to create , and this is what I have:
If you need a a ‘solid shape’ external to the dome, use an arc and FollowMe to create one rib in the vertical plane. Then use Rotate/Copy to make copies round the outside of the dome.
If you just want a hint of rib, then unhide or un-soften the arcs in the dome that would hint at the feature.
Depends how closely you want to be able to look at the model afterwards. A line might be enough for more distant views.
Thanks for the advice John.
What I did in the end was… shove a rectangular plane through the middle of the dome to intersect it.
I then somehow managed to drag that surface out again with the outline of the profile (curved dome shape) on it. Using that as my follow me line, i created circles approximating the shape of the rib I wanted, and then followed that shape up along the line.
Where the vertical line moves over the surface of the curved dome, it naturally created a series of about 10 or so straight surfaces to represent the smooth curve. (segmented)
So I went ahead and ‘softened’ the visible joins afterwards.
This is where Sketchup kinda irritates me a bit… I selected the entire geometry with a triple click, SOFTENed everything, and it DID remove those horizontal join marks between the segments… but it also introduced some visible vertical lines at the roof of the shape… (picture below) -just try to imagine the tube is curved and not just straight-edged.
and those lines in particular would NOT right-click, SOFTEN. They would not disappear. Pain.
So in the end instead of selecting the entire geometry with triple-click then soften, I chose to just soften the dividing horizontals one by one. Painfully though, it required deletion of multiple multiple straight lines around the curve because Sketchup never really seems to do curves exactly… or at least… the way i have gone about doing this… has resulted in straight lines. ie…
Anyway here is what I’ve got so far. ~60 hours. don’t laugh.
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