Help with Getting Started Tutorial 4

On the front support board on the table I was instructed to draw an arc. Then, I’m being instructed to use the push/pull tool to push in the front of this arc until it meets the back side, thereby making it disappear. Nothing I do makes this happen. I’ve redrawn the front face support element many times. I’ve gone back many steps to just legs and recreated it to this point—always with the same result. I’ve attached the .skp hallway table.skp (35.0 KB)

You need to open the component for editing before drawing the arc. Right click on the apron component and choose Edit Component. Then draw the arc and use Push/Pull.

This isn’t the first time I’ve seen this question about this table tutorial. I wonder if they neglected to add in the bit about opening the component to edit mode or if it’s there and just getting missed.

Notice when you draw the arc inside the component, it will display as normal edges instead of as a Profile (thick line). When it is drawn in the component, it divides the face of the apron and is not a profile edge.

You’ll also see when you hover over a face with the Push/Pull tool it shows the face as selected.
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These a clues that you are doing it right.

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Ah! Thanks. Got it to work. You are right, they don’t mention editing the component.

I have another question if you have the time: I would like to create a canister whose round face is upright, but it seems like every starting shape wants to be drawn on the ground surface.cannister.skp (17.7 KB)

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Orbit the camera to a lower position and that will help you stand the Circle tool up. Or hit the left or right cursor (arrow) key after getting the Circle tool. This will stand the tool up and align it with either the green or red axis as you wish.

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Thanks again!

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Actually at 9.19 he says the words, Now edit the front component.
Just to clarify, the tutorial is really about how to use groups and components and how to edit them, it’s not really about making a table.
So if you reached that point and didn’t understand that you needed to ‘Edit’ the component I’d suggest you review the video from the beginning to fully grasp the various concepts being discussed.
Each of these tutorials contains a wealth of information that can be missed on first viewing. You should go through them all again even after you think you understand them, their will be little tips that you will pick up because you will have tried something and now you see how he did it.

Rather than start a new thread, I thought I’d add a few more questions to this one.
My hope is to use SketchUp to model my subjects for my picture books so I don’t have to draw them 16 times in Adobe Illustrator from scratch for each spread. I see that I can export them as .eps and open them in Illustrator! Questions:

  1. Any way to not have edges show, which have to be deleted?
  2. Textures/patterns do not show up unless exported as JPeg—and then the issue of black edges again which can’t be easily removed in pixels…
  3. Or, am I going to have to get into rendering?

I’ve added an example of my work. Just the tractor.

Thanks.

Nice illustration.

This is a sufficiently different question to start a new thread.

In SketchUp, you can not show the edges with styles.

In Illustrator, you can not show the edges by not stroking lines.
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In both cases you need the edges to make faces or polygons, but you don’t have to express them. Is that what you’re getting at?

Yes, the textures only come through in raster output. If you use styles as shown above to turn off edges, they won’t come through in the raster output.

I lot of people have a workflow that goes from SketchUp to Photoshop. Not that many have talked about SU to Illustrator. I do a lot of SketchUp to PowerCADD which looks and works a lot like Illustrator. I often bring over a raster image with edges turned off, and a vectored version via DWG (but eps can do that) and layer the vectored line work on top of the raster image to get the best of both. In Layout, you can get that effect with Hybrid views. If you’re using Pro, you have Layout as an option for workflow. Not knowing all the details of your illustration methods, it’s hard to know exactly what to suggest.

Ah. I can hide edges with the eraser tool, or set them to 0 in the EPS export. That solves that. But, the shapes in the EPS show round edges as faceted. Cleaner in a TIFF or JPeg export though.

Posting as I learn in case anyone has similar questions. Increasing the sides (48s) in the measurements window as I draw a circle helps the smoothness. Then exporting to a JPeg after hiding edges with the erase tool (shift-click eraser on edges) has helped the look a lot.

With the exception of 3D export to dwg or dxf, SketchUp exports its circles and arcs in the internal, segmented representation not a true circle or arc. For 2D exports, the intent is generally wysiwyg.

That’s the workaround to get a smoother look both within SketchUp and on 2D exports such as these.

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Yes, that’s the recommended method to hide a few, selected lines when you only want to hide some lines while still seeing others. If you want to hide all lines, setting a style is faster.

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Thanks. That’s the way I’d go, I think.