I’m going a bit looney trying to figure out how to create a chamfer across multiple woodworking joints in as few steps as possible. If you have a cutting board with glued up slats that you want to chamfer, shouldn’t you be able to draw the 45 degree line, select the top or bottom face of the cutting board, click the little triangle you made with the follow me tool and presto have the entire face become chamfered? SU doesn’t appear to like following over joints or seams. Is there something I’m missing or do i have to select every little line segment(edge of the face) to guide the chamfer?
OK. So first, SketchUp won’t run Follow Me between groups or component. You need to open each group in turn to edit it. I wouldn’t use Follow Me on something that simple anyway. I would use Offset and Move/Auto-fold for the parts that get the chamfer on 2 or 3 sides.
If you wanted to use Follow Me, you could do basically the same thing I showed in a video I made this morning for something more complex.
great video. I’m bummed that I can’t use it across groups/components. Just thought there was a slick way to do the entire top face all at once. the offset/move approach does look easier than follow me. thank you for taking the time to help.
I think in general, the fact that you can’t modify the geometry inside a group or component without opening it for editing is a huge benefit. There are a few exceptions such as the Solid Tools with SketchUp pro.
Do take advantage of components and leverage them to reduce the amount of work you need to do. You’ll notice that I converted the outer two groups to components so I only needed to chamfer the outer edges of one of them to get the other one chamfered, too.
Just thinking out loud here. Does each “board” need to be an individual group/ component? If the whole glue-up was drawn as a single group / component you could add the chamfer using the follow me tool or the auto fold as @DaveR is showing you. Unless you are planning to do an exploded view and you do not want the geometry to stick, I’m not sure the advantage of making each “board” its own group or component.
in this example i could just make it one big board without individual groups/components. This was just a practice model to test how to create a chamfer across a joint such as a picture frame - which has joints at each corner. thx for the feedback.
There are advantages to creating components as you construct the model because they are how you prevent things from sticking to each other and distorting each other when you edit. Most woodworking projects contain duplicate parts (or mirror images), which are ideal uses of components. Also they are what CutList looks at for generating its list. However, if you are sure you are otherwise through editing you could explode the components and then add the chamfer as a final visual effect.
