Issue with Follow-Me Tool when working in very small scale

Hello,

Normally I use the follow-me tool to create rings from circles using a circle profile, and I’ve never had a problem until today. Today I was building a ring with a 7mm radius and a circle profile with 1mm radius, and when following the circle, nothing would appear, the path and profile would disappear leaving behind nothing. I tried restarting the program, and I tested this in both the 2017 and 2016 versions and I had the same error. Is there a problem with working at this small scale in SketchUp or Is this just a problem with my graphics card or such?

Thanks in advance,

Joshua

This is nothing new. SketchUp doesn’t create very short edge segments. They can exist but SketchUp won’t create them at that size. Scale your model up by a factor of 10 or 100 before running Follow Me. Then scale back down. Or use my preferred method. I would make the profile and path and the size I want the thing, create a component of them and make a copy of the component. Then scale up the copy, run Follow Me and do whatever else you need to do. Close the component and delete it. Then return to the original which will be where you created it all ready for use.

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But will it retain the details when I send it over to LayOut and dimension it or will the line segments simply be too small?

Did you even try it?

Of course it will retain the details and you will be able to add dimensions to it.

ring drawn using my preferred method:

Dimensioned in LayOut:

SketchUp has no problem with existence of small segments, the problems crop up during creation of new small segments. Scaling back down to correct size doesn’t create new segments, so nothing will be lost. Note, however, that if you do further editing after scaling back down you risk the issue again. As Dave advises, the workaround is to do all your drawing at an enlarged size and scale down to actual size only once you are completely finished with a component.

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Thanks for the info. (No I had not tried it, I was on the go. )

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Although not new to many, it saved me. 5 hours trying to make a 1mm curve and experiencing unexplained frustration. Thanks!

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