I’d like to make this metal tubing (which I stole from 3D warehouse and already has nice filleted corners) appear to have mitered corners/joints…
I have to make a bunch of them of various sizes, so a dynamic component would be nice…
Any suggestions?
Thanks!
Do the individual pieces all have to be separate?
FollowMe, or the plugin Upright Extruder by Eneroth can automatically give the appearance of mitred corners, at least on one face. If you want three-way mitres where sides join, or where top and sides join, you will have to do them differently.
Otherwise, you will find a series of Skill Builder short videos (numbered 1-8) on learn.sketchup.com. One of them is for a frame with separate corner pieces, which is conceptually very close to what you want.
You will need to make mitred corner pieces, with the join edges to the uprights and cross pieces hidden.
Try that, and if you get stuck, ask again here.
PS. How far do you want to treat this as a learning exercise about Dynamic Components, and how much are you focussed just on getting your frames drawn? If the latter, and you don’t need dozens and dozens of them, it might be quicker just to learn how to draw them.
It would help if you can provide a link to the tubing component(s) you illustrate, on the 3D Warehouse. And also if you complete your profile. Which version of Windows? What is your Graphics Card - n isn’t a graphics card. Did you mean nVidia? If so, which model?
Usually, filleting corners in RHS tubing is a waste of time and your computing resources. It multiplies the number of polygons in your model and makes joining things much more difficult. Your screenshot shows an ugly emphasis on the corners, probably as the profiles aren’t smoothed.
Being mindful of computing resources, as Anssi mentioned, Profile Builder is probably a good alternative: https://support.mindsightstudios.com/hc/en-us/categories/360001302733-Profile-Builder
I made this to answer a question elsewhere and remembered it was relevant to your question.
@Box’s gif shows you how to draw the tube corner pieces.
But for your purposes, I wouldn’t bother with giving the tube any thickness, and I’d either use 2 segment arcs at the corners, or (much simpler) leave the corners square or just with a simple 1 segment fillet. Then in all cases soften the corner edges after the initial push pull operation.
You will need also to make separate corner pieces for a three way corner join, and possibly a tee join either in one plane, or in two planes.
It also gets harder to make the DC if you want different sizes of tubing.
PS. Don’t forget that you may need separate corners for top/bottom/left and right with the axes all oriented the same as the overall model. It’s possible just to use the same piece, oriented differently, sometimes, in a DC. But it can get complicated to keep track of the axis direction, and won’t work if the tube isn’t square in cross section.
