I’m working on making a coffee table out of pipe of varying radii and I needed to draw it in SketchUp. I was wondering if there is a way to give the pipe the effect of looking saddled, or fitting without any gaps, onto the other pipe. It is essentially a 2" pipe for the leg and then a 1" pipe for the crossbars connecting the legs, perpendicular to the legs, parallel to the ground.
Thanks, any help would be appreciated.
Are you looking to do something like this?
That is close. I’m actually looking to saddle it the other way around, with the 1" having the cut-out
The 1" is being attached to the main part of the pipe rather than the top face.
How about posting what you’ve already drawn?
It’s currently on a different computer so just a second
YES!! Okay, so how did you do that?
I’m away from my main computer so I’m hampered by lack of technology 
I’m sure @DaveR will be happy to guide you through the process.
Since I’m sure Jim is working on something to show you how to do it, I’ll just add the following.
You only need to do this once for the pipe. You can copy the tube and flip the copy to make the other end if it is to have the same saddle shape. Make a component of the tube so you have it available to use again. You can modify the length of the tube after creation by editing the component, selecting just the geometry at one end and using the Move tool to adjust it. Don’t use the Scale tool to change its length.
Edit: Just saw Jim’s post. I’m not at a computer with SketchUp on it at the moment unfortunately.I could do something when I get home from work.
Since the guys are away from their computers, here’s an animation for you. I first made components for the large and small pipes and aligned their centers in the green axis. I opened the large pipe for edit, selected the outer surface, and did Edit->Copy. Then I closed the component and did Edit->Paste in place (this keeps it on the green axis alignment). Next I moved the pasted surface along the green axis until it overlapped the small tube slightly. Then I reversed its faces (will see why a bit later). Then I did Edit->Cut, opened the small pipe and did Edit->Paste in place (this gets the surface into the context of the small pipe while keeping its position). Next I did Intersect Faces with-> Context. Then I deleted the excess of the surface. Finally I deleted the surface that closes the end of the small pipe. That’s why I reversed faces earlier - it causes the end of the pipe to be oriented correctly.
(Note: I had view->component edit->hide rest of model turned on. That’s why things disappear when I open a component for edit)
@slbaumgartner shows the basic conceptual steps that you would use. More sophisticated than the basic steps, but better from a modeling workflow point of view. Here’s a short version (which incorporates @DaveR’s suggestion to copy the saddle and use move to scale it) :
[added] It’s probably worth noting that while this works with 24-segment circles, it will fail at some point if you use more segments to create a smoother result. In this case, make the pipe 100" and 200" inches in diameter, respectively, and then scale the result back to size by 0.01 scale factor.
Thanks so much! Is there an easy way to rotate circles? Since they are curved I have a hard time grabbing a corner or point to rotate it around?
If you make the pipe a component or group (I’d make it a component) then you can use the Move tool to rotate it about its center.
Thank you all for your help!
