This is my first post so hello and thank you in advance for any help you can give me.
I am desperately trying to learn Sketchup Pro 2018 and would be interested in a service where I can talk to an expert for a fee?
I create structures using structural glass panels which I am trying to model in Sketchup from a point cloud.
Generally every panel is unique in its shape rather than its construction so I am investigating Dynamic Components.
The sketch below is a 3 part component showing inner and outer glass and a spacer bar.
I have constrained the component so the panel can scale without changing the fixed glass and spacer dimensions but I can only scale it with 90 degree corners whereas a lot of panels have non square corners.
I have spent days looking for a way to create a component that can do this without success - maybe I will have to draw every panel individually.
SketchUp internally supports shearing components but it isn’t directly exposes to the user. For non-affine transformations however a new separate component would be needed.
I don’t think you can do what you want using DCs in their current form.
I presume what you need is something that can quickly provide a DGU from a set of parameters. If it were square, you would only need X and Y dimensions. If they are irregular, you might need several dimensions, including diagonals.
I am sure it must be possible in theory for someone who knows how to write Ruby scripts to provide something that would meet your very particular needs. Perhaps you should post this in the Developers section of the forum?
Thanks for your reply’s which seem to confirm what I thought.
The problem with creating units from scripts is that I have to model them first to obtain the sizes and the less square they are, the more I need to model them.
Thank you so much for your work which goes a massive way towards achieving what I require and your DC does cover every shape I need - on the every odd occasion I need a panel which isn’t a quadrilateral, or needs say curved edges, I can model it individually. I’m going to work on your idea and try and achieve the one thing it misses out i.e. the spacer bar.
This is what I’m trying to achieve: I import a Digital Laser Scan (Point Cloud) into Sketchup to give me the exact geometry of the building I’m working on then I model the glass panels and any metalwork onto the scan to ensure everything fits. I create each panel as a group initially because I find it easier to manipulate the panels and position them on the point cloud. I then use the panel (groups) to create the glass manufacturing drawings. The reason I need to convert the groups geometry into components showing them as DG units with a spacer bar is to build more realistic models for my clients.
At present I use a Freelancer who creates stunning models from our drawings which have a certain WOW factor about them, but in all honesty they are more that the client needs and they are very expensive. I believe a nicely detailed Sketchup Model will more than suffice.
Here is a link to one the models the Freelancer produced which is NOT what I am expecting to emulate but it would be nice to get close
