On Friday I produced the curve on the left, with Fredo’s Curviloft plugin (“Offset contours along the rai” method" turned off the PC and went home.
Back at it on Monday, and for some reason the Curviloft plugin is refusing to recreate what it did just 48 hours earlier. I’m getting the weirdest shape, no matter what I do.
Tried everything I could think off: rotating the circles, experimenting on different PCs at work, old versions of SketchUp, uninstalling and reinstalling the plugin etc - no avail!
Can someone please help?
We can’t move forward without recreating the curve on an updated path and the “Stretch rail between contours” is squashing the middle part, so that’s not the correct method. Here’s the file and another screenshot of the settings bar:
I am also noticing your icons look different than mine. Wondering if I’m using a different/obsolete version. But even that is a mystery because literally on Friday it was working as intended and I generated the left curve…
Even tried an older Curviloft and Fredo Library versions. Still the same issue. Is there a way to directly contact Fredo? I think I’ve never met him on this Forum.
Try orienting the faces of the circles so their back faces are toward each other. Also try drawing the segments of the path between them in the same direction. e.g. all left to right.
I’ve always used Curviloft the same way, and it’s always worked. Usually I put the 2 shapes into individual groups and leave the spline ungrouped. But literally nothing works today. I even tried welding the spline.
Interestingly, just asked another colleague to recreate the same. She is facing the exact same problem, albeit sitting in another office 500km away.
It’s in the video Dave. Both grouped vs ungrouped, selecting only edges vs with faces also…
Also tried reversing faces like you suggested, so the back faces face inwards - no success there.
Even restarted the laptop. I’m thinking about reinstalling SketchUp again if I don’t manage to find the reason behind this. Mondays are a pain in the back!
Found the problem (after 3-4 hours of further tests and experiments)!
I think this has to do with SketchUp itself, not the plugin (or versions thereof).
I went into my archives and found a dusty old installer of SketchUp Make 2017.
@Fredo6 I’ve already reached out to you in a message, but please have a look into this new screen cap too. 2023.0.367 vs 2017.2.2555. I am thinking I might have to remove all my plugins and reinstall 2023 to see if it will fix the problem. One thing I didn’t check with @mihai.s and @john_mcclenahan - what was your SketchUp version where you tried the SKP file I uploaded? Thank you again.
Further confirmation if anyone comes across this thread in the future. Curviloft’s “Offset contours along the rail” method is malfunctioning in SketchUp Pro v23.0.367 and v23.1.329. No problems detected in SketchUp Pro 2022 v22.0.354 and v2023.1.341.
I downgraded to 2022 because upgrading up from the installed v23.0.367 would mean having to deal with the new icons, which I could not bring myself to adapt to (both as a consumer and a Designer with over a decade of experience).