Hi DaveR, I need some help again - TomMP

I’m calling you out DaveR, just because you were so helpful before with my little timber frame.
This is a completely different project. I’m trying to sketch up an all-steel tiny house. All steel because it is for somebody who has severe sensitivity to most building products: sheetrock, paint, wood, because it is susceptible to mold, tar, caulk, etc. Just about everything you can think of, honestly. So the construction is to be of steel, cork (as gasket material) and perlite (for insulation). Anyway, I’m not asking for your advice on that issue, rather my flailing attempt to sketchup it. I’m pretty confident that what’s going on is that early on i rotated some part to 90 and some fraction degrees, when i meant to rotate 90. And since then I’ve been dogged by that error. I guess I know the answer lies in starting over and NOT making that error early on (or later on) but maybe you could have a look at the file and give me some advice on how to keep the parts on the red green and blue axes. Thank you in advance.
garth frame3.skp (294.8 KB)

Okay, I just looked back at my earlier post and re-encountered the good advice to disable length snapping. Maybe I was thinking I had it disabled because I did it for the other project, and now I realize it is something I need to do every time. That may be part of the problem.

Hi Tom,

The Length Snapping wouldn’t help your modeling but it shouldn’t have anything to do with the rotation you are seeing. I see the studs at the end are sloped inward. I asume that’s what you are referring to.

Easiest thing would be to delete those studs, rotate/copy the one at the left corner making sure you are rotating on the blue axis and then use Move/Copy to make the additional ones.
studs

I don’t see any other problems with the model that would make me push you to start from scratch. did I miss something though?

I think the reason they are angled is that the H-beam frame is not level and plumb. When I move/copied a wall of studs to the frame they started poking down thru the beam. I rotated the whole wall up to be correct, but then it isnt right when I copy it again.

I see your animation. thanks. I’m not sure how you rotate and copy at the same time…but that would explain why i sometimes see a protractor pop up when I futz around as I’m copying.

Hi Dave, I figured something out. Using common sense. Turns out the frame was not level, so i moved a corner of it to the origin, and i could see it veering off the green axis, so I rotated it back to that axis, deleted the leaning studs and recopied them. Not able to do that cool copy/rotate you show in the animation, but accomplish the same thing in a few steps.
Thanks.
I see from a popup message that I’m not following proper forum protocol with these multiple replies. sorry.

Getting the first parts level is definitely important. I didn’t look at the deep because I was getting called away to do something else. If it isn’t really obvious that you’ve fixed everything, maybe starting over with the first parts correctly oriented is a good idea. Sometimes it’s just easier to tear down and build fresh

As for the Rotate/Copy thing, it’s the same as Move/Copy but with the Rotate tool. Get the Rotate tool and hit Ctrl to activate the copy function.

Don’t worry about the message about posting.

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