I have a (probably very silly) question regarding the ‘follow me’ tool, which I couldn’t hate more!
Basically, I have grouped walls and then I have the cornice or architrave face, which is not grouped. I usually group the walls as soon as I start working so, as you know, I can create geometry like kitchen cabinets that won’t stick to the walls.
I could create the skirting board or baseboards as soon as I make walls so nothing is yet grouped, but when I create bespoke cabinets, the units need to go to the walls and then after that, the client adds the baseboards. So here comes the issue. By then, I have grouped my walls and I don’t want to explode in case it all goes wrong. I’ve watched Justin Geis ‘Sketchup essential videos’ regarding the grouped face to follow but usually, the path is not grouped (that would be my walls), so then I don’t know what to do. Help???
The fix is simple. Once you have the outline of the cabinets you want the architrave to follow, all you have to do is draw a new path along it. Then draw the outline of your architrave and use the guide line you have drawn as the path to follow. You might then want to group the resulting architrave.
Yup. You can equally draw the line above it or below it. It won’t make any difference to Follow Me. But then you would need to delete the line afterwards and it is easier (usually) to draw it in situ. The main drawback to in situ is that it is difficult to see and if you have ungrouped geometry it could get inadvertently stuck to it.
Skirtings/architraves - they all work the same way. How you choose to group them is up to you. I guess my default would be to keep the skirting as a separate group as they are not part of the structure. But that’s personal preference. If you want to make them part of the wall, there are various ways to do it. The way I would do it is to select the raw geometry before grouping, delete it, open the wall group, and then invoke Paste in Place to reinstate it.
When you use Follow me the path must be raw geometry but the profile can be a group/component. So you can easily use the same path for multiple groups.
Select the path, then get the follow me tool and right click on the profile group and select Edit Group, then click the face. Note that the path will appear to be deselected but it is still active.
Thanks for this veru useful insight! @Box, do you know if it possible to extrude two faces within a group, as above, simultaneously along a given path, as above?
Technically no, but in reality yes, just think in reverse,
Create the shapes you want as holes. If you gave a specific example I could show you but here is the concept.
