Follow-me never seems to work like I expect. Right now, I’m trying to use it wrap an edge profile around 90 degree bends.
When I try it one way, it pretty much works, but leaves a surface open. When I select a different starting surface, it works, but clobbers what seems to be unrelated geometry:
Is this a bug, or am I doing something wrong?
As for the missing faces, it’s probably a size thing. How big is it?
In your second GIF, the problem is the size of the profile face and its relationship to the path.It’s sweeping that profile around the curve as you are asking it to do. What you are seeing is a bit like when a truck with a long overhang on the rear end goes around a tight corner.
Neither one of those things is a bug.
I see now the issue in the second example.
I scaled up by 1000x, do the same operation as first example, and no gaps. Hooray!
The object is several inches in each dimension. Is that considered small? Precision is set to .0000", length snapping is not enabled.
Should I always work with a greatly enlarged design, then scale down? In my world, inches are huge!
By itself no. But the small geometry being created during Follow Me is.
That’s only display precision. It has no effect on the small faces issue.
Since you seem to be using SketchUp for 3D printing, you could do what I’ve advised you in an earlier thread. Set Units to Meters and enter your dimensions as if inches or millimeters are meters. Since you want .stl files for printing, there’s no need to scale down at all. The .stl files are unitless. Just tell the slicer software that your model is in inches or millimeters as appropriate and it should all work fine.
If you are intending to show the model in context with stuff modeled at full size, you can scale the component down. I need to do that for furniture hardware, for example, although I generally use “The Dave Method” when modeling that sort of stuff.
Yes, in addition to 3d printing, the model needs to be a component with other 3d modeled components. That’s why I mentioned scaling back down.
I’d scaled it down since the solid issues were fixed (thanks for that!). I just didn’t realize sketchup would have problems with items in this size range.
So, I’ll just work as you suggested and scale down when integrating with “actual world” dimension ed objects.
Thanks
SketchUp was designed primarily to be used for architectural modeling. As such it does a pretty good job with small details but what you are working with is smaller than it is normally designed to handle. It’s only really the creation of the very small geometry which is the problem. So scaling down can be done after it’s created.
That’s good to know.
Is the result the same as if you scaled down instead of editing the component?
So, if I follow correctly, editing a scaled instance of a component will result in the non-scaled component being edited without having the small geometry issue?
That saves a bit of time.
Thanks!
It is basically the same however I find it useful for a number of reasons. One is that I can start modeling a component at actual size and in the exact location it needs to be when I’m done. This allows me to use other parts of the model for reference. I only scale up to do the stuff that would create the tiny faces. Then when I’ve finished with the large copy, I exit edit mode and delete it. When I return to the model, the component is where I left it and completed.
A few years ago I had an e-mail from a guy who was modeling a Greene & Greene style chessboard. Lots of small radius roundovers. He was complaining that Zoom Extents deleted his model. He’d scaled his model up and down numerous times as he was modeling all this small face stuff. The problem was that he’d scale up with one handle and scale back down with another. At the time I got his model, the chessboard was about 7 miles from the origin. He also had a very tiny edge segment a few feet from the origin in the opposite direction. Zoom Extents was showing him the extent of his model space but it’s almost impossible to see a normal size chessboard from 7 miles away. Had he used the Dave Method, his original chessboard would have been at the origin where he started it.
Just a note about scaling down. If you make a component of the large version of the object and then scale the component down, remember to correct the definition with Scale Definition in the Context menu. There’s no need to do that with The Dave Method, though.
I usually scale up by a factor of 1000 when I do this
