Creating a gramophone

Hi Guys
I’m trying to create a gramophone by using Bezier curves… A curvy pipe that starts with one diameter and ends up with another one. It should have an even internal thickness of 0.1
I’ve attached the file
Can anyone suggest how to go about it?gramophone.skp (145.3 KB)

You might give Fredo’s Curviloft a try. You can get it from the Sketchucation PluginStore. You’ll need to also install LibFredo6 which is also available there.

Thanks,
I’m new to Sketchup, didn’t know about sketchucation.
Do you need to have a monthly membership to buy their plugins?

No. There is a Premium membership available which gets you some additional benefits but you can join with a free membership. Most extensions in the PluginStore are available at no charge but you are certainly welcome to make a donation to the author.

There’s also these plugins, which will draw a taper along a curved path. However, you’d probably need to do it in two sections…a regular taper for further down the horn and a separate section for the pronounced flare at the end.
One thing I would advise against is trying to do this while coping with the thickness of the metal itself. Just make a single skin; you can add thickness later with Joint Push/Pull.
If you are a beginner, you couldn’t be jumping in any deeper.

Thanks Alan,
How can I do Push/pull on curved surfaces ?

Thanks Dave, I will certainly will as soon as I find my bearings :slight_smile:

Another way of doing it would be to create first a surface of revolution about a straight axis.

Draw a profile face with the cross section you want (use smooth arcs and/or Bezier curve tool), then use the Follow Me tool to revolve it round a full circle.

Then use CurviLoft to bend it to the curved shape in your attached sketch.

I tried this briefly, but find that CurviLoft doesn’t follow your 3D polyline very well. Not being familiar with CurviLoft myself, I don’t know how to change this.

Do you REALLY mean this construction to have a largest diameter of over 7 metres, as in your drawing? Or is this supposed to be on the scale of a domestic gramophone of the 1930s? Perhaps at most half a metre diameter?

Joint Push/Pull is a plugin specifically designed to cope with non-planar surfaces.

A Sketchup pro recommended using larger scale so it will be easier for the program to work on the fine details as I’m scaling it down

That’s good advice. I use a slightly modified version of that. I generally start the drawing at the real size. If there’s something that requires working at a larger scale, I make a component of the geometry, make a copy and scale the copy up. Then I work on the large copy. When finished with it, I close the large copy and delete it. Returning to the original shows the work is done and it is exactly the right size. For example, the knurled knobs on these pins are slightly less than 1 inch in diameter.

Thanks, Where can I get it from ?

Sketchucation.com, same author as Curviloft.

Thanks David,

I’ve been working on it till now and made nice progress.
But as I do the joint push/pull it just doesn’t make a thickness. It kind of scale it by the requested thickness and creates the edges as if there is an internal layer (which makes it a solid)

Can you suggest how to go about it?

You just need to make the correct setting in the bar that opens when you start Joint Push/Pull.

Thanks again David. With your help I was finally able to finish it. If I wasn’t bald, I would have definitely lost my hair by now…:slight_smile:

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