I am working on a model of the Bosch Colt router, a copy of the cylinder that hold the router is attached. On the actual cylinder there a a few rows of dimples roughly ⅛" in diameter running vertically. I have tried every way I can think of to reproduce these dimples and am stumped. There is nothing in the 3D warehouse materials section that works, the dimples seem very crude. I hope someone in SU community can help me with this. Thanks
Dimples 10.skp (201.3 KB)
Do you need dimples as geometry or as a texture?
As it is your object isn’t a solid due to the zero-thickness join in the area. I’ve added a section cut to show it.
Here I’ve made a slight modification to your model so it is a solid.
With that done you could create spheres to use with the Solid Tools to make dimples as geometry.
I would suggest scaling the model up. by a factor of 1000 first. Are you intending to 3D print this thing or just model it?
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A couple of notes on things you could do to make your modeling easier:
- turn off Length Snapping in Units. Also set Display Precision higher so you can see small dimensions. This sort of model deserves higher than 1/16 in. precision.
- When you draw circles make sure you drag out their radii on axis. In the screenshot I have moved your obect so the slot is centered on the origin. Note that the green axis doesn’t meet the vertex on the opposite side.If the circle was drawn on axis the green axis would hit the vertex.
I would also suggest that for modeling something like this, doing so centered on the origin is useful because it gives you an easy way to identify the center of the object. It also makes it easier to use the axes for reference.
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Dave - as always, thanks for the help. Regarding making the model a solid, I attached a screenshot in which Solid Inspector shows it to be a solid. I know some conditions can fool SI and I will go back and correct as you suggested. I am just doing a model, not intention to 3D print. I am not sure how I got this thing off-axis, I will fix that. I will also change line snapping and the level of precision.
I prefer to do the dimples as geometry, this is a SU skill I would like to learn. I did a couple of earlier iterations creating the dimples as a group and trimmed them from the cylinder. None of those attempts created what I considered acceptable quality. Having said that I will search outside of the 3D Warehouse for a dimpled texture that I like.
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You’re quite welcome.
Yes. This is true. When SI2 shows everything shiny but SketchUp doesn’t call the object a solid, run Solid Inspector, the older one, not Solid Inspector 2. It sometimes finds problem that SI2 misses.
FWIW, the issue in your model is that the vertical edges where the inside and outside surfaces meet are shared by more two faces. In order for SketchUp to consider an object as a solid every edge must be shared by exactly two faces, no fewer and no more.
That’s good for learning.
I think I’ve suggested before that you work with units set to meters and enter either inches or millimeters as if they were meters. This will allow you to create much finer detail if you want to do that. As it is, your model is quite small.
Depending on what you want for a dimple shape, you might consider a shape different that a sphere. Maybe something roughly like this. Consider the cross section shape of the dimple you want including how it transitions to the outer surface. Draw that profile and use Follow Me around a circle to make a solid 3D dimpler.
If you don’t really need the geometry a texture is often a better choice. If you were going to 3D print the object then the geometry would be important.
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Thanks Dave, you are a really good resource. I Googled “dimples Sketchup” and found this post where you helped someone with a similar question: Round bottom indentation help - #8 by DaveR. I think between what you provided in this thread and what was in the other that I can take it from here. Thanks again for the help.
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