Meaning of thick lines and thin lines?

I’m sorry for asking a basic question, but I tried looking for the answer already, but I’m so new to Sketchup that I guess I don’t even know the right terminology to use in my search.
Is there a meaning that I should be aware of to the thick lines and thin lines in my model? :thinking:

Oscar v045.skp (475.8 KB)

You can edit the profile line with in the styles settings. The thin lines are between two faces (no profile edges), the bold one is probably connected to one face only (profile edges).

What he said…

Thanks! Do you mean here?

Thanks to you for putting me on the trail of the right terms to look up!
I think I found a nice overview here:

:grinning:

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or in the style palette.

you can change the profile thickness too.

line%20thickness

Thanks! :grinning:

@ned.reif

Hi Ned,

The root of the problem is stray geometry.

Having the Profiles turned on merely makes the stray and lonely edges bold, thus easy to see.
But turning the Profiles off won’t make the plethora of stray and lonely edges go away.

Neatness counts in modeling.
Best practice is to tidy up as you go.

In this copy of your model I’ve used an old cleanup plugin to label the strays.
Oscar v045_Issues.skp (495.7 KB)

The scenes point to a few examples.
You’ll need to turn on Hidden Geometry to find some of the tiny edges floating about because they’re hidden.

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True if you zoom in close enough, but if profiles are set to have a width greater than 1, from farther away they can blend together and look like one!

Whoa…that’s a very nifty animation in “Oscar v045_Issues.skp,” and that must be a very handy cleanup plugin! Should I install it, too?

I turned on Hidden Geometry and found it much easier to work with. I am just wondering what invisible elements seem to be lurking in the background, extending the box around the fuselage to far off in the distance. How can I find, select, and delete them?Oscar v045.skp (497.5 KB)

Thank you very much for your efforts on my behalf.

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Open the group, turn on hidden geometry select the bit and delete it.
Stray

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Haha! That looks easy! I find that now that I’m actually starting to learn a thing or two about how to use SU and the need to be careful and precise, I find I’m becoming increasing reluctant to just start clicking away–so thanks! :grin:

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Just in case you were curious why you didn’t notice it, it is a tiny little curve way off to the rear, too small to see until you zoom way in:

stray

Maybe it’s time to clean my screen :smile:

StrayLines v.1.000 by Todd Burch

The download from www.Smustard.com is in RB form
Here’s a copy in RBZ form to save you the trouble.

stray_lines.rbz (2.5 KB)


There are far more powerful cleanup plugins, just be careful, it’s possible to clean away things you want.

CleanUp³ by ThomThom
https://extensions.sketchup.com/en/content/cleanup³

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Thank you!
Apropos cleaning away things I want, I was trying to get rid of what appear to be stray or extra lines (indicated by the arrows) and used the CleanUp3 plugin, but found that the arrow (which I thought had become part of the fuselage), part of the canopy placement outline, and the wing outline disappear.
Is there a way to…

  1. merge the arrow with the fuselage, and
  2. distinguish lines I want to keep from ones I should clean away?
    Unused to SU as of yet, my eyes have trouble picking out where there are problems.
    I really appreciate the help! Oscar v045.skp (535.7 KB)
    PS I just tried reassigning layers, which I hope I now understand

The “stray lines” you marked in red are just not softened or smoothed, so they appear solid not dashed. Open the group for edit (it is nested one level deep), choose the eraser tool and control-click them to soften and smooth them.

I’m not sure what you mean by “merge the arrow with the fuselage”. In the model you provided, it is in the same group as the rest of the fuselage and the edges making it up intersect with those of the fuselage.

Due to the curvature of the shapes you are working with, it is likely there are short edges present. Depending on settings, CleanUp3 will erase or try to “fix” these (and that can induce SketchUp to also erase adjacent faces).

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In this latest iteration, the fuselage group is nested inside another group.
Explode the ‘parent’ group as it’s unnecessary.

That’s why I recommended Burch’s Stray Lines.
Until one is familiar with its settings, you can do damage with an advanced cleanup tool like CleanUp³

Learn to use the Select tool and Entity Info to interrogate the model.

Select one of the Edges.
The Edges in question are not strays, they’re simply visible Edges.
The Edges rendered as dashed are Soft/Smooth.
They’re all Edges, just rendered in different ways.

Notice in Entity Info you can change the visible Edges to Soft/Smooth.
You can also make Edges soft/smooth using the Eraser tool while holding down Ctrl
Or, use the Soften Edges dialog in the Default Tray.

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Thank you both! I really appreciate all the help!
I just successfully installed Burch’s Stray Lines (and am excited that I figured out how to do it, which was pretty easy, even with my limited computer science skills). Next I will follow your other bits of advice.

PS I should have said “lightning bolt,” not “arrow” on the fuselage, which is one of the main reasons I am learning Sketchup:

  1. its intersection function seems superior to that of Metasequoia, the program I have been using for years, where it is referred to as a “Boolean”
    and
  2. its ability to cut patterns like the markings on the fuselage is very important to me, since UV mapping in Metasequoia has always been a huge headache, so I am very excited how easy it was to “cut” shapes like the hinomaru and lightning bolt into the fuselage. My hope is that they will be much easier to work with once I have unwrapped the parts for further refinement in Inkscape.

The UV mapping in sketchup isn’t that great for complex shapes but there are some plugins like “SketchUV mapping tools” that can help. However, what you have done is put the lightning strike and circle onto the fuselage as hard geometry, which in this case is likely to prove much easier and more accurate than to map this onto the fuselage as a texture.