Line length question

SketchUp
#1

This so basic a question, I almost hate to ask. But here goes:

If I draw a line that’s too short, what’s the best way to fix it?

  • Delete the line and try again?
  • Use the Scale tool to lengthen the line?
  • Add on another line so the two lines combined have the desired length?

And here’s a related question:

If you create a line between two points A and B. Then you create another line between those same two points, does SketchUp record just one line or two?

Thanks!

#2

1 Select the line you wish to edit, and go to Entity Info. Editing length here will extend or shorten your edge from the start or from an intersection, unless both ends are intersecting.

2 Just one edge

#3

All of those methods work, as does the Move tool. With the Move tool active and nothing selected in the model, hover the mouse over an unconstrained end-point of the edge. Click-and-release the mouse, and start moving the end-point in the desired direction. You can click-and-release a second time to determine the new location of the end-point, or you can type a dimension and press Enter (in which case the end-point’s new location will be in the direction of movement, with the specified distance from its initial location).

Adding an additional edge to extend an existing edge works OK visually, but personally I wouldn’t like the resulting geometry that contains two co-linear edges. I haven’t tried this, but perhaps one way to cause SketchUp to merge the two short edges into one long edge may be to draw a third edge at the intersection of the two short edges, which heads off to the side (arbitrary direction, arbitrary length). Then delete that off-to-the-side edge. The deletion may trigger SketchUp to merge the two remaining co-linear edges.

#4

This should work, and usually does.

#5

That does appear to function as Weld. Which is trippy, but makes a bit more sense than “only originally singular and later split edges re-weld when deleting the intersector.”

#6

I think this highlights the uncertainty. Sometimes joining two colinear lines with Weld fails for no apparent reason too. I tend to use the Move tool, especially when on axis. It wouldn’t occur to me to use the Scale tool but I guess that would effectively do the same thing.