How do I Create a Sphere

How can I create a sphere in SketchUp Make?

Use follow me tool.

Sphere

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Thank you very much for the detailed explanation

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Also check this plugin for creating basic forms: Shapes.



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I must say that this is the first response that actually let me create a sphere, thank you.

The extension loaded, but did not work for me.

Can you provide more information? How do you know it’s loaded? Do you see Draw > Shapes section ?
Also try relaunching SketchUp.

I downloaded the extension, loaded it with extension manager within SketchUp. When I clicked on shapes in draw I saw the 3D shapes. I chose sphere and a dialog cox came up. I clicked okay, and nothing happened. I tried the other 3D shapes and nothing happened with them either.

Seems like you did everything correct. Just one more guess, try using ‘Zoom Extents’ tool, maybe those geometries appear tiny at the origin.
Sorry, that’s all i can guess.

I believe @SketchUp_Team will be able to provide more info about what’s causing this.

That was the problem. I changed the radius to 400, and the segments to 25. One click and the sphere appeared instantly. Thank you filibis, I’m sorry I doubted you…

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For objects created from a circle - like a sphere, cylinder or cone - it’s usually best to set the segment count for the circles to a multiple of 3, and 4.
So 24, 36, 48, 60, 72, 96 etc.
This means that they are easily manipulated in 3d, and nodes fall logically.
It’s also counterproductive to make too many segments, as the facets generated increase disproportionately and offer little visual benefit for smoothed objects whilst overloading the model’s geometry, shadow handling etc.
If you are intending to 3d-print, then choose a segmentation which makes edges within the printers minimums, having more geometry that that is of no benefit. See ‘versines’…
http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=577465#p577465

Hmm, there’re still some aspects of follow me that I don’t follow. If I were set out to do this, I would have thought to draw a half-circle as the profile to use with a circular path. So, why does this work? Why doesn’t it make a doughnut instead?

One problem with using a ‘half circle’ if drawn with the Arc tool is that the ending segments won’t be at right angles to the axes, so the ‘sphere’ won’t look right. You can do it (I think - will try in a minute) by drawing a circle, then rotate it by half a segment (rotate a segment midpoint to the nearest axis, draw a line across a diameter on-axis, then delete half the circle.

When you use a full circle for the FollowMe path, I think SU ‘cleans up’ any duplicate geometry.

Interesting…
When I use a half circle for FollowMe path, and a full circle for what to follow, I get a weird result that I don’t understand:


If I do it the other way round, using the half circle as the profile, and the full circle as the FollowMe path, I get a sensible result, but will all the back faces outside.


And if I start with the full circle oriented at right angles to the start of the path, and rotate a half-circle which has its endpoints bisecting an original circle segment, I get a half sphere only:


If the circle is sufficiently offset from the circular path, you DO get a doughnut (or torus).

Yup, Follow Me has behaviors at times that I don’t understand. By putting a profile on the path and perpendicular to it, I get results that I expect all the time, but other circumstances are puzzling, especially your first example.

Hi RTCool.

It’s hard to basic users (as me) understand how the follow me tool works, I’m still learning about it.
I asked about this before so you maybe find useful the following links.

https://forums.sketchup.com/t/why-follow-me-doesnt-work-as-i-expected-how-to-fix-it/

Make tries as I did for example this one to understand it better.

Regards.

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