You do know you can type in the sizes you want as you go I hope!
The beauty of SketchUp is that you can do this with absolute precision during nearly each and every operation. For example, when you draw a rectangle, after the first click you simply type your dimensions and hit enter. When you push pull, after the first click, simply type the distance (e.g., 4ā3 for four feet three inches). This works for almost everything and makes the whole process much like drawing on the back of an envelope. Youāll have it in no time.
Yes, but Iām not really sure how I would do that in practice.
Itās 4.35 am on the wrong side of new year and a significant quantity of whisky, so Iāll have to leave further explanations to euro/us timezones.
Well, the evening is coming down fast upon me now and itās definitely time to start getting drunk. So I will wish you happy new year and come back to it when my brain has refreshed.
Thanks for the help, guys. Iāll look into all this later.
In practice you simply click on an origin once, type your dimension(s) or distance, and hit enter. This is how the software works and itās designed for the needs of exactly what youāre asking of it. Trust me, once you get it, youāll be going in no time!
USS (start) - faceproblem-1.skp (664.0 KB)
I came back to it and built the walls as suggested in this thread. I removed the rest of the model (which seems fine). I made the box, reversed the faces, selected what I wanted to erase and removed the top and other two sides to make the walls. Again, Iām having problems cutting a hole in the face of the back wall. It seems there is something wrong with the back wall face, whereby when I select it, it shows various facets instead of one face. Click on that far wall (the one with the cut out at the top for the stairs) and you will see what I mean. I honestly donāt know what Iām doing wrong here. Also (and this may be some clue) I keep receiving a program notification saying something is messed up in this model and needs to be fixed. It asks me if I want it to fix the model and of course, I click on āfix modelā. But this keeps happening.
I will, of course, be discarding this file and starting again (as suggested). But without knowing the cause of the problem, I fear it may happen again at any time.
Why do you reverse the faces?
Yes - but why has that happened? I literally drew a box, then removed the front and top faces to leave me with the back and side wall (as someone showed me in a prev. post). Where have those extra lines come from?
All I can think is itās something to do with making that box around the stairwell I had already created. The problem is, I need to build the stairwell first, in order to take the measurements for the rest of the model. I work from the inside out, if you see what I mean.
Iāve started on a fresh model where Iām able to do everything youāre illustrating there. The problem is, I donāt have any frame of reference and this technique is all fine, as long as itās just a visual sketch with arbitrary dimensions. And I want to make accurate wood working templates.
I suppose Iām gonna have to measure the whole hall first (wall to wall),to make the large box and then start work inside of that. I was using the stairwell I created as a starting reference point.
A model is built of Edges and Faces. Faces have a front side and a backside.
You have Edges rendered black and the Background rendered black.
Youāve set the front & back Default Face Materials to nearly indistinguishable shades of gray.
An odd Camera Field of View and applying translucent materials muddies things even further.
No one can build a model in the dark while looking through a distorted lens.
Try that @PropBuilder
Hereās a start ā¦ USS (start) - faceproblem-1_Rework.skp (15.6 KB)
Okay. Gone back to a default template. Thanks.
USS (experiment) -1.skp (63.7 KB)
Iāve been experimenting with the way I see users normally cutting out shapes in SketchUp. No measurements; no accuracy to speak of. I donāt NEED to draw stairs but I thought it would contribute to the learning curve. All the advice Iāve received here has helped me no end, so thank you to all.
It just remains for me to come up with a workflow for accurately modelling, in this method, to my real-world measurements. If anyone has any suggestions (and the time) I would be most grateful.
(Iām coming to this from the premise that: if my surrounding environment is reasonably accurate - that this will form a good basis for the apparatus I intend to model inside it.)
Cheers.
PB
I think you are sort of missing the point. Nobody has suggested you canāt be accurate in sketchup, in fact quite the opposite, you can be accurate to several decimal points of a mm. Your issues are being caused by sketchup trying to be accurate but not quite getting the right info.
Because the style you were using made it difficult to see what you were snapping to you were introducing tiny inaccuracies that forced sketchup to ābendā faces which made them fracture, hence the strange triangles.
Now that you can see what is happening use inference points to snap to and type in the measurements as you need them. You start an action then let go of the mouse, type what you need and hit enter. This works for most things in SU, so a rectangle can be drawn to an exact measurement this way and you continue from there. Mid points, endpoints, axis and angles are some of the inference snapping possibilities. Arrow keys will lock to specific axes.
So whether you start with the stairs or the walls makes no difference as long as you are accurate. I think from memory of looking at an earlier model of yours, you had guides and 1mm thick walls. These created lots of snap points very close together so that you managed to snap to the wrong points so that things were out of alignment.
If you go back to the earlier model youāll see that the guides donāt lie flat on the walls, so the guides are actually causing problems rather than fixing things for you.
You can adjust the units in model info to a precision that works for you. At the moment you have it set to cm and only 1 decimal place so you are getting a tilde when your dimensions are not a precise cm.
Start a new model and build it accurately using a simple template and Iām sure you will find your difficulties melt away.
Edit: Iāll just add this gif to show what I mean about using accurate dimensions by typing them in. This was done for someone that wanted a very specific size and alignment of holes.
Thanks, but I think you have slightly misunderstood me. I have never said (nor ever believed) that one cannot be amazingly accurate with SketchUp. I know its capabilities, from a successful design I made, which I translated into wood last year. However, I am simply not used to using SketchUp in the (can I say?) conventional way. When it comes to accuracy, itās my own level of competence with the program that is in question - not the program itself.
PS: Although progress feels slow right now, Iām beginning to see how this will work for me.
Ok, I misunderstood.
Though your critique of my mistakes has helped me see where I was going wrong. So thank you for that. I feel like I am getting somewhere now.