Gully is absolutely right about cleaning up the model and simplifying the geometry. You can create the shape you want with the Follow Me tool. Here’s the basic procedure:
- Draw the parabola on the ground plane (the area defined by the red and green axis lines). Easiest way to do that with native SketchUp tools is to draw a half-circle, then use the Scale tool to stretch it Also, don’t place the endpoints for the half-circle right on the axis line. Instead, begin the parabola a fraction of an inch away from the axis line and fill in the gap with straight lines.
- Use the Offset Tool to create the inner edge of the parabola.
- Draw the shape to be extruded on the green-blue axis. Same routine as in step 1. Again, don’t begin the curves right on the axis lines. This will make the extrusion work better (the path for Follow Me and the profile to be extruded have to be perpendicular to one another at the beginning and end of the path).
- Scale everything up 100x.
5.Highlight one edge of the parabola. Get Follow Me and click in the shape on the green-blue axis. - Do any necessary clean-up. Depending on the dimensions and curvature of the parabola, the shape may fold over on itself, leaving funny wings that look like pieces of the Sydney Opera House.
- Scale back to normal size.
Hope this helps.
dh