Sorry, not sure if I’m using this forum as it’s supossed to asking such as beginner questions.
When I use the freehand tool to draw a not closed form and then I use the selection tool and I click in any edge, it selects all the segments I made using freehand tool.
Let’s supossed I close the object using a line connecting both points. The program treats the freehand and the independent line as “two objects”, I’d like it works as only one, is there any way to do this without making a group?
I know I can use “explode curve” to divide it on segments, I’m looking for the opposite, how to connect all of them.
A second question, how can I record a gif or a video to show something?
There is no built-in command to combine segments into a curve, but there are various extensions that do so. Search either the Extension Warehouse or sketchUcation’s plugin store to find them. Look for “weld”.
I use LICEcap to capture screen animations because it is simple to use, free, and available on Mac. Others such as SnagIt and Camtasia are also popular.
SketchUp’s knowledge of a circle or circular arc’s mathematical parameters (center, radius, plane, etc) are kept in “metadata” associated with the series of edges when they are created by the circle or arc tool. Various kinds of editing operations cause SketchUp to remove this metadata because it is no longer able to assure the parameters are still valid. Alas, neither the GUI nor the Ruby API provides a way to regenerate it.
Plugins such as TIG weld tie the edges together as a polyline, but can’t make it back into a circle. Chris Fulmer wrote an extension that finds the geometric center of a set of edges as if they are chords of a circle if that’s what you actually need.
In the current version, Curvizard supports the following functions:
Make Curve (i.e. weld), with option for auto-extension
Explode Curves (multiple edges)
Cleanup Contour (collinear, small spikes)
Simplify Contour (by angle)
Smooth Contour (by splines with average angle)
Modify Edge Properties (soft, smooth, hidden, cast shadows)
Convert to Guides: convert a sequence of edges to a sequence of construction lines
Well, technically I was right but practically I was wrong! The GUI and API don’t directly provide a way, but this extension does! I should have known…it does what I would do manually. It draws a new circle or arc overlying the exploded original. Thanks for the correction!
