Flatten to plane

SketchUp
1

I am trying to flatten geometry on to a flat plane. DRAP is useless as ever. It creates an image of the lines on the plane but refuses to create surfaces. It really frustrates the ■■■■ out of me. Even drawing over the lines after any gaps have been closed does not create the surfaces.
I have tried Enroth’s Flatten to Plane, still not joy and even Fredo scale set to 0 on the vertical plane. Still nothing.

Any ideas?

2

Have you tried “Edge Tools2” by Thom Thom to close any gaps and then Eneroth’s “flatten to plane” and “face creator”

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3

YES. I use Edge Tools first to close the millions of gaps that DRAPE creates. and then flatten to plane. I will try face creator. It isn’t an extension that I know. Thanks

4

hello, can you attach your file so we can see what you are dealing with ?

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5

Once you have the image of the lines on a plane try Eneroth’s Face Creator. It works perfectly for me. If that doesn’t work theres something wrong elsewhere. If the lines are in a group you will need to explode them.

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6

Both of these methods work fine. Drape would not be my go-to for this, it’s built for another purpose. How small is your mesh? Upload the .skp of the geometry you are trying to flatten,

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7

Another option is to set the view to orthographic and export it to DWG. Then reimport that view.

There is antoher plugin from @alsomar called FaceUp
https://extensions.sketchup.com/extension/0a0dd4c6-55c2-4975-bac9-a0ecf49ddaa1/FaceUp

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8

Try method #2 of this post.

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9

+1

we don’t know what you’re dealing with, the scale, the complexity.

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10

Hi All,

Thanks for your help you are all stars.

I have sorted it out. I am still not sure what the issue is but it seems that the lines were coplanar after using Flatten to plane. SU would not create
a separate surface for fully closed areas even if I traced over the lines. Once I deleted all the existing surfaces, it allowed me to draw between lines and then it created the new surfaces.
The worrying thing for me is that I deleted the first attempt and reran DRAPE. The results that I got where markedly different to the first run on the same geometry. The core basic functionality is seriously lacking.
I wish TRIMBLE would stop messing about the AI and spend time fixing or creating tools that actually work. We rely far too much on the good will of genius’s such as Thom Thom, Enroth and the like to make their plugins available.

11

Thanks,

I have just taken a look at it. It looks like a really useful extension.

12

I did have an email chat with FREDO and he/she does not recommend using his scaling tool to do this. It was not designed to do it.

13

i guess this extension; didier Bur Projections, would do it
https://community.sketchucation.com/topic/113139/plugin-projections-version-2a-updated#p167471

2024-08-09 10_51_48-Sans titre - SketchUp Make 2017
2024-08-09 10_51_48-Sans titre - SketchUp Make 2017794×834 85.4 KB

select faces
move the cursour to the projection plane below

14

I also have an old but serviceable extension in the SketchUcation PluginStore…
https://sketchucation.com/pluginstore?pln=FlattenToPlane
It needs another of my olde extensions to make a plane [in any orientation] to flatten on to…
https://sketchucation.com/pluginstore?pln=WorkPlane

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