I’m attempting some very simple modeling of a PVC pipe assembly for keeping birds out of my fruit trees. I’ve downloaded the 1/2" fittings models from Form-U-Fit, and I’ve created cylindrical pipes with 13/16" OD to match:
but I can’t figure out how to align the pipes with the fittings and insert them so they snap in and bottom out. I’m sure there’s some beginner’s tutorial that I should watching, but I don’t even know what vocabulary to search for!
Can someone point me in the correct direction? Thanks!
p.s. I’m using an ancient Desktop version of SketchUp Make 17.2.2554, if that’s important.
Here I find an edge and it shows the center inference. Clock to move. Then I inferenced off the other part. You may have to hunt around a bit to find the center… but it’s there!
Thanks for the link to the models too! Nice little collection.
IT’s good you’ve got it sorted out. FWIW, if I needed to do this sort of thing I would place the pipe’s component origin 3/4 in. inside the pipe so when dragging a copy in from the Components panel I could dop the component such that I didn’t need to move it in by the 3/4 in.
Illustrated in X-ray. I also placed a guidepoint at the center of the opening in the Tee to make it easier for you to see where the component is going but one could use inferencing for that and forego the guidepoint.
Like this. One was already added at the other end.
You would need SketchUp 2023 or 2024 in order to add snaps. The feature isn’t available in SketchUp 2021.
BTW, and tangentially on-topic for this thread, but isn’t this the sort of thing that could be made vastly superior with VR headset and a true 3D editor? Viewing in stereoscopic 3D is nice and all, but editing in true, stereoscopic 3D, with a UI that understands 3D movement of hands/controllers/etc. on all 3 axes, is where the sauce is.
I’m still quite the novice with SketchUp (and other 3D viewers/modelers), but I always always always struggle with getting things to move or align on the correct axes because my computer is faking a 3D world on a 2D display.
Or is there an existing thread to talk about this?
Thanks for the link to the models too! Nice little collection.
Hmmm. Their 0.5" 45º elbow seems to be a bit off. After repeatedly aligning a set of pipes in an octagon, and being a bit off, and being sure that I’d gone around at least once, I put just 8 elbows, center-point to center-point, and ended up with this:
