Missing elbows in follow me tool

Problem with follow me tool SketchUp 8. Practice 201.skp (73.0 KB).
Thank you
Chuck Stewart

You’re running into the tiny face thing. Put the Follow Me path and the profile into a component, make a copy of the component, scale it up by a factor of 100 or 1000, edit the large copy and run Follow Me. Then exit edit mode and delete the large copy. Return to the original and Presto!

I have made a component of the shape to be extruded and the path. How do i now scale the component up 100 times? And once i do that step and run the follow me tool and successfully get the completed shape, how do i then reduce the scale back?

Select the instance and make a copy of it (use the Move tool and tap the Alt or Option button, then drag the copy off to the side somewhere). Select the new copy (that is, the second instance) of the component. Activate the Scale tool. Click-and-release on a corner handle and start dragging out away from the component. Let go of the mouse. Type “100X” and press Enter. That enlarges the copy by 100 times.

Just to be clear on how to execute the Follow Me operation: Activate the Select tool and double-click on the large copy to enter its editing context, then run the Follow Me operation in there. Then press ESCape or click outside the large component’s dashed bounding box to close the editing context of the large copy. You will see that the original (small) copy of the component has experienced the same Follow Me operation as the large copy in which you actually performed the operation.

You don’t. Just select the large copy and delete it. The original small copy will be good to go by itself.

This strategy of creating a large copy of a component, editing the large copy, then deleting the large copy is traditionally called the “Dave Method” and is a great way to cope with SketchUp’s inability to manage end points that are close to each other. You will probably encounter references to this term elsewhere on the forum.

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Illustrating:

davemethod

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Thanks guys for your time and help on this. I will work on this tonight.
Chuck

I must be doing something wrong or not understanding your directions. Initially made original instance a component and copied it. Ran scale tool and scaled instance 100 times. Ran follow me with success Clicked on escape. Did not change original instance. Some how the connection is lost between the scaled up instance and the original.

Share your file with the component. It sounds like you made a group, not a component.

Made component from EDIT pulldown menu Moved copy by using move tool +ctrl.Practice 201.skp (56.0 KB)

DM

I wonder what you are doing differently.

Select copy, scale up by a factor of 100 in this case, select path, run Follow Me, exit Component Edit mode, delete large copy of the component. I show the original one before deleting just to show you it’s there.

Works for me too, and only scaled by 10.
The Dave

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I worked for me also. It was working before but could not see the results because the enlarged model was too close and covered up the first group because the enlarged group did not automatically go away by clicking escape. had to select it and use delete key.

That’s the second to last step followed by zooming in on the original.

Thanks so much for your time and patience. One final question unrelated to this.
When using the circle or rectangle tool the arrow keys don’t work to define and change the plane orientation. Is that a laptop problem or how is it made to work with SketchUp?

It doesn’t work in SU8

That was a feature added much later.

Thank you.

These men done a great job in communicating and in providing clear and visible instructions to answer my question.
Thank you !!!

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