Newbie - problems cutting holes through "followed" shape

[bluphoto]

I’m making a design for a car steering wheel centre boss using the “vase” tutorials online creating a shape and the using follow me to extrued round a circular path.

Now I want to punch out holes from top to bottom on the 3d shape, but some of the faces created by the follow-me extrusion aren’t “splitting” when I use the interesect with model command.

Perhaps its because the “cylinder” I’m using as a “punch” isn’t appearing as a solid -even though it has both ends enclosed.

Can anyone help? I’m not sure how to attach a file here.

[Box]

Attach by using the 7th icon from the left at the top of the reply box, or just drag and drop your file into the box.
Must be less than 3mb.

[bluphoto]

won’t let me attach - all reply icons are greyed out…

[Box]

Perhaps you need another post or two to reach a specific trust level.

[bluphoto]

Seems I can at least paste a picture. Not sure if this helps until I “level up”.

[Box]

What this tells me is you are using the 3d printing template that has the useless dynamic component for multiple printer spaces. Delete and purge it. Window/Model info/Statistics/ Purge unused.

This also tells me you are probably working at a very small scale, which can cause faces to fail to form.

And mostly I see different contexts, the orange cylinder has a bounding box so if the white is raw geometry you need to select it and choose Intersect faces with model, then remove the orange cylinder and delete the parts of the white that you don’t need.

Once you Purge your model you may be able to attach it.

[bluphoto]

Thanks, that worked, apart from when I do the intersect, some of the faces disappear on the white piece, and I need to somehow close the “cut-faces” where the orange cylinder walls penetrated the object. This should be a solid, filled object.

Might you know how to repair this?

Might have to do some more interacting to be able to upload the file.

[DaveR]

@bluphoto

Might you know how to repair this?

I bet he’d recommend “The Dave Method” which you can learn about here:

The Dave Method

The Dave Method is the clever use of components popularized by @DaveR to avoid the tiny face issue. Sketchup fails to form faces when edge segments get down around the 1/1000" mark. However, tiny faces can exist so the workaround has generally been to scale up your geometry, edit it, then scale back down. This works, but can lead to some issues. The Dave Method leverages the power of components to make life easier. The basic concept is, you start with a component set at the size you want, t…

Make sure you correct face orientation so there are no exposed blue faces.

[Box]

I bet he’d recommend

I had it already copied and ready but was reading elsewhere.

[bluphoto]

I don’t see any blue faces on the outside of the component. What you’re seeing here is the inside of the component after the piece is cut out. I’ll try scaling it up, and redoing the work. thanks for the tip.

[DaveR]

@bluphoto

What you’re seeing here is the inside of the component after the piece is cut out.

Hard to tell from your screen shot. Reversed faces are a common newbie error so if I see them in their screen shots, I mention it.

[Box]

That’s also what I meant about context, if you have the orange cylinder actually touching the white part when you intersect them you will keep the faces. Not the tiny faces, that’s a different issue.
If you can upload your model it would helps us to show you exactly.

[bluphoto]

Thanks guys. I’ve also noticed that I “followed” round a 24 face circle, so the part is heavily tesselated. I think I’m going to start again and follow round a higher res circle. Have also scaled it up 100x, so will see where that takes us.

Is there an easy way to get back to the X-section, so I can re-follow-the new circle??

[DaveR]

You can draw a face from the center out through the extrusion and intersect faces to create a cross section.

Don’t use too many sides in the circle. It is easy to use too many which is overkill.

[bluphoto]

thanks. Will maybe go with 72 instead of 24. should be pretty tight.

[DaveR]

72 or maybe 96. In any case, I prefer to keep the number of sides divisible by 12 which means it’s also divisible by 2, 3, and 4.

I did this as a quick example using 96 sides for the overall part and 48 for the cylinder for the hole. Obviously the dimensions are right but it should give you an idea of how it could look. For 3D printing you might need to do something about the sharp edges where the pin hole breaks through.