I need an extension that can make triangles in curves

I have a curved surface and I want to make it so the surface is lots of perfect triangles is there an extension or anything like that I can use to do this?

Hi marcusleeds, hi folks.

Try Tools on surface from Fredo6 or search for geodesic domes.

Regards.

Jean

You have a curved surface? Would it not already be a collection of triangles? Is Soften/Smooth Edges masking the underlying geometry? Have you tired showing hidden geometry? Any surface should be a collection of planes already. Perhaps I’m missing something.

Heres a download link for you this may help.Dubai World Towers.skp (652.5 KB)

No, a SketchUp surface is a collection of faces with their joining edges softened. Depending on the curvature they might be triangles, but they are not required to be. In the model that @marcusleeds posted, they are long skinny rectangles.

Which begs the question, @marcusleeds why do you need them to be triangles? That is, what do you need to do for which the existing rectangles aren’t sufficient? Your answer will help inform the best way to get triangulation if you really need it.

Sorry I was not clear and slbaumgartner is of course correct. What I meant to be getting at is that same point that Sketchup only works in planes so that somewhere under it all the basic geometry must be faceted. What is a perfect triangle? You could of course draw a diagonal line across each plane for big triangles, but It sounds like something closer to a soapbubble that Marcus is looking for. Do you, Marcus, need to work with these triangles or could you paint them onto the surface?

There is something interesting about that building. It seems like a kidney bean shape and an outer curved wall. You should be able to make the base using curves that have a lot of steps in them, then use the push pull tool to extrude those to the height of the building, select the top surfaces, and use the rotate tool to create the twist in the building. That should create all the faces you need.

Again, depending on why he wants them triangular :wink:

i want it to be lots of small triangles to add detail plus when i zoom in on it. it isnt a perfect curve its lots of steps which isnt what i want

Ok, I think we are all trying to help out. I don’t completely understand about the “detail” aspect but if it is a surface treatment you want with triangles on it you might want to look into creating a custom material out of a picture which has the triangles you have in mind. If you are looking to work with those triangles in sketchup, as in reshaping the building by moving triangles around you might have some rebuilding work ahead of you, although there are some ways to speed up that process.

This model was built rather roughly out of a series of ungrouped planes. It will be difficult to work with, and might be worth rebuilding as Colin suggested. It’s also worth noting that everything in sketchup is made up out of a lot of steps, it’s hard to tell from you question how much experience you have so forgive me if i’m being too obvious, there are no perfect curves in sketchup. Have you experimented with soften/smooth edges?

Now I’m just thought experimenting alone here, how about start with a rectangle with one line diagonal across then select it and Tools>sandbox>add detail. That can be repeated to add tiny triangles to a surface.