Creating bodylines on a car

Hi, I am currently working on a car in sketchup and trying to add body lines to the model (the lines where each part/panel ends, eg. the lines on the edge of the door). How should I go about doing them? Is there an easy way of adding them to an existing model?

There could be any number of ways but without seeing your model or at the very least a screen shot we would only be guessing.

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Check out Fredo’s Tools on Surface extension to draw on curved surfaces. Available at Sketchucation.com

First, you only need to model half the car, since the body is symmetrical side to side. Second, consider modeling each part–door, quarter panel, hood, etc.–separately but in position, and making each part a component. The edges of the components will form the body lines you’re after. Use a lofting plugin like Fredo6’s to create the compound curves for the body panels.

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The model I am using is an existing rFactor 2 model which I have exported to Sketchup format from 3DSimed. The way I have gone about it so far is by separating each of the panels i want bodylines in, extruding the edges and rounding them but that is proving fairly tricky. What is the best way about doing this? (if there was a way I could simply push the edges rather than the faces that would make things a hell of a lot easier)

Here is the model I am mentioning, note the dark lines are where ive split the model and where i want to create the bodylines, essentially i want to chamfer those edges.

I am finding a lot out on how to push faces but i may need to push edges, don’t mean to be impatient but I do need help ASAP as I have a timeframe that I need to get this done in… The responses I have had so far are helpful and I thank you all for that, but how do I actually draw the bodylines? I am very inexperienced with this software so I need some kind of help with this

You cannot push pull edges. You can, however use the move tool to adjust their location.
Preselect an edge and you will be able to use the move tool to relocate the entire line. If other lines or entities are connected to the line, they will also moved in response to moving the line (edge).
If you want to just move an end point, do not pre-select the line
Simply hover over the end point with the Move tool to have SU select it for you, click on it then move it to where you want it. If you want the end point moved to a specific point, drag the end point to the new point and click to set it.
Also you can turn on Hidden Geometry (View_Hidden Geometry) to see all of the lines, faces and end points that might not be so obvious)
If you have an issue getting an end point to go where you want, tap the Alt key (turns on Auto-fold). This frees up the geometry to allow it to move more easily.

My technique to draw the door lines, body lines, windows,etc is to stand up a face parallel to the car body, paint the face with transparent material.
Set the view to parallel projection and select a standard view that gives you a perpendicular orientation to the car.
Draw the lines, etc. on the transparent face by looking thru that face and drawing the lines where you want them to be placed on your car.
From here, you have to

  1. Make sure you create a closed face(s) so you can push pull them through your car. Once that’s done, select your car and the pushed pulled faces. Right click on them and select Intersect Faces. This will transfer the lines of the shape on the original face to the car.
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Actually you can push pull edges, but it requires an extension, adebeo_pushline, from the extension warehouse.
But your suggestion would work fine.

Huh…
What happens when you push pull a line…does a face get developed?

Short answer, yes!
It’s a nice extension to have.