Follow Me along an arc.... issue?

SketchUp
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Trying to make a 4" PVC 45 degree elbow (cant find the right one in the warehouse)

My plan was put a circle on the floor, create the perfect arc to achive a 45 degree face at the end and use follow me.

everything works except at the base (the original circle on the floor) is no longer flat on the floor.

the back end (Blue) is slightly higher than the floor and the front end (Red) is slightly lower than the floor.

I am guessing that this is a problem with MY arc? or is this the problem with ALL arcs and the follow me tool?

thanks for help

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2

What you are experiencing is due to the fact that the first segment in the Follow Me path is not perpendicular to the profile (or the ground plane in this case) The Follow Me operation projects the profile to be perpendicular to the first segment in the path. The end face of the extrusion will be perpendicular to the last segment, too.

The fix is to not draw an arc for the path but instead, draw a circle and split it at the mid-points of sides at the correct angle.

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Here’s an example. To start I did this with a default 24-sided circle to make it easier to see how the end segments are oriented.

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And in this second screen shot, I changed the number of sides in the circle to 96 which is plenty to get a smooth looking elbow.

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2 Likes
4

I just replied to another thread about the same issue and made a feature request to fix this behavior.

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Short answer is ‘yes’. You have to be careful to get the first segment of the path perpendicular to the profile you are extruding if you want the end to be square. FollowMe makes the first face perpendicular to the first segment of the path.

As @DaveR said earlier!

7

My posts must be invisible again. Hmmm…

1 Like
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The latter. Follow Me and Offset are somewhat bugged.

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Thanks for the help, I found a decent workaround, BUT!

Now I am curious, there has to be a way to find (solve for) the “Perfect arc” setting?

Using the 2 point arc tool, if i have an imaginary right triangle with

Opposite = 8
Adjacent = 8
Hypotenuse = 11.3137


bulge = 2.5530

or even though mathematically I could find the answer it is further complicated because SketchUps programming converting to an unknown X number of sides based on length, angle, ect,ect,
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What? The number of sides used to draw an arc isn’t an unknown. Get the 2-Point Arc tool and look at the Measurements box before you start to draw the arc.

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