Creating a solid object

Hi,
SketchUp seems to be a great tool… but I’m probably not intelligent enough to use it… :frowning:

For two days and hundreds of tutorials I still can’t draw an object that looks like the following… :sob:

I really have tried everything…

Can anyone help ??? Please !!!

Is it supposed to be flat on the ends?

Something like this?

Wow !!!

I can’t believe it !!! Now that I see it, it looks soooooooo simple !!! I will try that right away !!!

But… Now that you “saved my life” :smiley: with such a fast answer, let me please ask you one more thing…

In fact I wanted to cut all 4 edges the same way like these two, but didn’t know how to draw it by hand that it looks understandable…
So if you could show me that as well, I’d be really grateful !!!

Make one corner the way you want then use ctrl with the rotate tool to make copies on the other three corners.
I used inferencing to mark the center. And click drag to change the axis of the rotate tool.

A very similar approach with circles…

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Thank you (Box and Cotty !!). I understood that part now. Especially the way Cotty did it…

But here’s the second problem I was talking about …
I wanted to cut all of the 4 edges on the top side…

Another try to draw it by hand…

That’s even easier, use the Follow Me tool.

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Thanks again Box !

It all seems soooooo easy and logical… - when you watch other people do complex stuff… :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

With your help I managed to create the following… (I just did what you did with copying corners, only on a different axis… hope I learned it now…)

(At least I have something normal to upload :slight_smile:)

But now the next problem…
I tried on this sketch to draw a corner as you did before you used the follow me tool. But that gives me just an error massage every time… :scream:

Sorry to bother you again…

Here’s the image with the error message… (Sorry, I use the german version. But maybe you can find out what my problem is by looking at the sketch.)

This is telling you that you are working too small.
SU has problems creating edges smaller than 1mm, so the segments of your curve would be smaller than that.
If you work larger it will work.
Tiny edges can exist but you need to make them bigger to start.
Just scale up by 10 or 100 and it will work.
This little gif should demonstrate it better.

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Box you are a genius !!!

ok. Did the copying and scaling… no prob… And the cutting worked fantastic !!

But I did something wrong … as usual … :scream: The cutting action didn’t have no effect on the original body as it did in your gif…

I’d bet you made a group instead of a component before you copied and scaled up.

Box is a genius, though. :wink:

Is your object a group or a component? The edit of a scaled copy works only for components.

The two Genii above me have answered your question.
You need to select all the geometry of your shape, right click and choose Make Component, then copy and scale up.

LOL !!! :blush: :blush:

Ohhhh yes… it’s a group …

I’ve learned so much thanks to you all… I was fighting with SketchUp for two days and achieved absolutely nothing on my own…

Thanks a lot again !!!
Dean

I just scaled it back to 0.1 and saved it now as a component… THX again…

That’s one way to do it. Check to make sure the definition is scaled correctly. Right click on it and see if Scale Definition is available to be selected. If so, click on it.

Had you just made the original a component before copying and scaling the copy, there’d be no need to scale down or worry about the scale of the definition.

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Ok, but the whole point of The Dave Method is you create the original component at the size you want, then make a copy of it, scale the copy up and edit the big copy, when you have finished editing you just delete the big one and all the edits are there in the original small one.

By the way, the Dave of The Dave Method is the very same Dave just above me.

I understand. Using component copy/scale there’s no need to worry about mistakes in re-scaling…
I’ll try that right away (but still keep the rescaled one as a component… just in case I mess up something again… lol)