I am trying to model out an LED light cube that I want to use when designing and attempting to fabricate a mount for it. The cube has curved geometry that I have been trying to replicate however sketchup won’t create a surface once I’ve connected all the arcs that make up the exterior surfaces in my model. Any tips on how you would go about modeling this out. I’ve provided a screenshot of my model as it sits currently for reference.
I’ve looked at the “Drawing a Tapered Curve” topic and unfortunately since I am using the Web version I can’t download an utilize any extensions.
Since it wouldn’t let me post this picture as well, here are the dimensions of the light cube in question.
Also, the wire outline and the back surface that it did connect are a single component, the other two items are additional components within the model.
If you share the .skp file it would be easier to give you guidance.
From seeing the screen shot my first thought would be to draw arcs from front to back and stitch them together with the Line tool to create the faces. Depending on the exact shape, you might be able to get away with doing one side of the box and then using Rotate/Copy to make the other three. sides.
Another way would be to draw just the front or back face, extrude it in steps (press Ctrl for each Push/Pull step) and scale the sections.
How about sharing the .skp file instead of the .stl? The .stl file will be a mess to clean up in SketchUp Free and it’ll need to be cleaned up to work with it efficiently.
I did a quick example using the second method I suggested using Scale.
Since I showed you an example of using Push/Pull and Scale, here’s a start of the other option. I drew shallow arcs from the vertices on the front arc to the back edge. Then started stitching between the arcs with the Line tool.
You really only need to do half of the side. You can then copy and flip that to make the opposite side.
I think you’d find it easier to work if you scale the model up. I would scale it up so one inch equals one meter, set model units to meters and enter any new dimensions as if inches are meters.
