Follow me tool restrictions

SketchUp
1

Using Make 2016, 32 bit. Win 8.1
Are there any restrictions in using the follow me tool?
I’m having a problem trying to make a 90 deg curved tube. my curve has a .3125 radius and 6 sides. The tube is 1/8" diam and 48 sides.

2

There are two things you may need to take into account:

  • follow me needs the profile shape to be oriented perpendicular to the first segment of the path. If the profile is skewed, follow me will project it to a plane perpendicular before extruding it, and that will distort the shape
  • SketchUp will not create edges smaller than about .001 inch during follow me (and some other operations). It seems likely your tube is close to this limit, as when a profile goes around a curve there can sometimes be surprisingly small edges needed. The workaround is to scale up the geometry before doing the operation and then scale it back to real size afterward. The small edges can exist, the issue is only that SketchUp won’t initially create them during follow me.
3

I think it’s also worth mentioning that you normally don’t need 48 segments for a circular cross Section. In some cases, e.g. for rendering, this level of detail is needed but often it only makes the file larger and slower to work with without adding anything useful. If you are modelling pipes for a drawing of the plumping in a building maybe 8 segments is enough to represent a circle. The required level of detail depends entirely on what the model is ment to be used for.