Faces not forming (solved!)

SketchUp
#1

I’ve painstakingly traced this image so I can make it 3D. I have gone over and over it, and I can’t find the messed up edges in the outline that are preventing the face from closing. Pretty sure there’s at least one that is on the wrong plane.

Does anyone have a way of locating them? I’ve tried the “draw a rectangle” trick, and exporting it as a 2D .dwg then importing it again tells me there are three layers… so two off-planar lines? I’m tired and facing a deadline… can anyone take a quick look or point a newbie in the right direction?

I’m using Make 2017 on Mac desktop. Thank you so much!

#2

Attach the model.

#3
#4

Nothing there.

#5

Sorry, it wasnt imbedding the link. There’s one there now in the OP. Should, hopefully, link to the 3D warehouse.

#6

Are you using freehand tool on a drawing tablet? I’ve been trying to work on the same goal, so I can make 3D reliefs of drawings.

If you select your edges and go to scale tool and see a cube, the edges are not 2D/coplanar. This happens a lot if using x-Ray view/style. Instead, draw directly onto the reference image or onto a grouped rectangle.

It helps if you go to Model Info and turn Length Snapping > off. Even then, face generation is very spotty. Doesn’t seem to be any solution to face generation fails except to scrap your drawn edges and redraw them until they finally click. *edit: or, for a more mathematically structured illustration such as your example, use arc and line tool rather than freehand

#7

Yes, I’ve been drawing with the line and arc tools (all snapping turned off) on the face of the reference image. Anything closed will extrude quite happily. I’ve redrawn the outline half a dozen times, and for the life of me I can’t find the magic to get it to close into a face.

With all edges selected, the scale tool shows me a flat plane, which would infer the edges are coplanar (and therefore SHOULD be forming a face), no?

#8

Can you attach the model itself to a post. Just drag and drop the file into the reply window, or use the upload button at the top of the reply window.

#9

capitan.skp (2.9 MB)

@box thanks for the tip!

#10

Agreed that they should!

I must say it looks as if you’ve done a very careful job of tracing, so it’s a big disappointment that so many faces just don’t form.

One way to fix it is first to assign your tag ‘baseline image’ to the image itself, then turn it off.

Then you will see more clearly which faces have formed, which not, and which are reversed (blue back face showing).

Reverse the blue faces when you have several formed to make the white face show ‘forward’.

That way, you can see more clearly where the faces haven’t forme.

Then work your way round with the line tool, creating partial faces by joining places where a face should form when you do. That gradually narrows down the areas where your profile lines don’t join, or wouldn’t make a face even if they did join perfectly, because they aren’t part of a closed loop - which I suspect may be the case for parts of the outer perimeter.

Like this - partially done lines in the Captain’s beard (my lines highlighted in blue):

image
image1222×1134 43 KB

#11

There are a great many extra edges that are causing the problem. Wherever you have joined a curve but not hit the endpoint it can create an extra edge that stops the face forming.
Here is an example.
Edge

#12

Oh wow, Box, I thought I’d found all those. Seems like I need to zoom a heck of a lot closer than I thought!

I appreciate your and John’s help. I’ll clean this up and keep trying!

#13

You bloody genius, I could kiss you. I’ve been fighting this outline for HOURS. Thank you.

#14

Here’s a fixed version, if you want it.
capitanBox.skp (1.5 MB)

#15

There’s still some boundary-fails in that upload, but I’m more impressed that you got 9181 edges to form a face without any blast-doors.

Screen Shot 2021-01-06 at 16.10.18
Screen Shot 2021-01-06 at 16.11.15

On the OP upload, there are some overlaps in the narrow-pinched curves, as well as the teeth - here’s 25 extra entities from the teeth and nearby in the OP upload, after I group-ed and removed the larger faces.

Screen Shot 2021-01-06 at 16.07.48
Screen Shot 2021-01-06 at 16.07.48789×516 50.9 KB

Fundamentally, the OP’s edges are coplanar and closed, but SketchUp face-formation becomes inconsistent when the edges get complex / organic. As far as I can tell, the only best practice to manage this problem is to construct the drawing face-by-face from the start.

#16

Always a welcome offer, but thanks will do well enough! I’m not even allowed to hug my (adult) grandchildren, let alone get kisses, even from them. Hugs will be back as the covid crisis dies down with vaccination. Though I’ve had a handful not entirely in accordance with the rules, and very happy to have had them.

Glad to have provided a tip that helps.

#17

THANK YOU! I see you do a heck of a lot of helping on these forums, and am very grateful for that.

1 Like