How am I going to use it? Look at it, see if it looks pretty
I’m just doing this to learn how to do things before I really need to use it. In this case I’d like as much detail as possible since I could see using sketchup eventually for 3d printing or cnc routing. As of now I haven’t done anything useful with it besides things like designing a doll bed that I built my daughter for Christmas. About 5 years ago I used it at work to document the case for a piece of electronics that I was prototyping, but in that situation I was machining to the part and then trying to draw something similar for some documentation that was passed out to some generals.
@Silverback, This is the method I generally use for working on small parts but be aware if you use the Solid Tools to make modifications to the scaled up copy of the component, that instance of the component will be converted to a group and the original instance of the component will not get modified.
Your profile indicates you are using Make. If that’s the case, you must be working with the Pro trial and unless you opt to purchase the license, you’ll lose the Solid Tools at the end of the trial. If you aren’t going with SketchUp Pro, you might want to learn other methods for creating these details that don’t rely on the Solid Tools.
As for threads, I did a tutorial a while back. I’ll find the link and get it to you.
You are not alone! This issue made me crazy until I finally posted about it and was edu-ma-cated about it as well. Now, in accordance with what I have learned here, I just always draw big, make components of the large version and shrink a copy of the component down to actual size and leave it. SketchUp was already easy and that trick alone doubled the ease factor.
Now you’re making me wonder about how to do it without the tools, since right now if I don’t have a specific real use for it, I don’t think I’ll be spending money on the pro version.
If you have the pro trial, it would say that at the top of the main SketchUp window. Look toward the upper left corner.
Making the chamfers on the nut can be done with a simple Intersect Faces operation and some erasing of unneeded bits. The one I made from scratch was done without the Solid Tools. That’s actually a very simple one.
The barley twist legs and the flame finial were created without the Solid Tools. In both cases those parts are solid and 3D printable.
As for the screw threads, take a look at this old thing. It shows one way to do it.
Yea, it looks like I have the pro trial… Oh well. I guess I’ll have to experiment with the intersect, sounds like this is basically the same procedure as with the subtract but you intersect and then start deleting everything that isn’t what you want to have left?
Will look at your tutorial in a little bit. I may try rebuilding my bolt head without the solid tools first :-/
Yes. The solid tools are built atop the same intersect-with as available in Make. In essence, they do an intersection and then automate cleaning up based on the kind of operation you chose (union, subtract, trim, intersect, split). They can save a lot of time, but in the end don’t do anything you can’t do in Make with some effort.
Due to the curved edges, they are not planar. You will have to draw lines between points on the arcs to triangulate them (aka “hand stitch”). You may have deleted too much while cleaning up.
You need to have the cutter and the hex nut geometry in the same context. that means they have to be within the same group, component, or all loose in the model.
Huh… not going well… I was able to stitch it together, but I can’t remove much more of the lines than this without opening surfaces. Any ideas how to do that? Is there something that I can do to just smooth that surface and remove the lines?
As @DaveR and I suggested, you probably need to go back and a) make sure everything is in the same edit context (component or group open for edit) and b) make sure not to erase the part of the intersecting surface that originally closed that gap (it will have already been triangulated).
I’ve found a way that works well in metric units for drawing small parts.
If you model using metres for millimetres, and just add a dimension suffix of m, the dimensions come out saying ‘mm’ - the first m for metres from the dimension, and the second the added letter ‘m’.
When you get the dimension appearing, replace the displayed text by <>m - the angle brackets tell Sketchup to show the original calculated dimension, and follow it by whatever text you type after it.
Example: Set units as Decimal, in metres. Choose your precision - 0 to the nearest metre in drawing, mm in presentation of dimensions.
So I just took another shot a this, I’m not sure what was really that different with the intersect but it worked beautifully this time.
I drew my hex
I drew my cone
I aligned them
instead of making sure they were both selected or whatever I just exploded all the geometry (selected all and explode)
intersect (model, as far as I can tell model does every intersection, selection only does the intersections in the selection so it seems like model is safer, you just might have more erasing)
erased the segments of the cone and it left a nice, closed chamfer. Yay!
at this point I did something differently then before, instead of doing it all again for the bottom I used push/pull to push the bottom of the hex in 1/2 it’s height, moved/copied the top down the same distance, flipped it blue and erased the centerline created.
I was about to say “No it won’t, it will say ‘ft’ instead of ‘in’” till I thought about it for a second, you big dummy, it uses ’ and " so as long as I set it to decimal it’s fine… Heck if it has a feet/fractions of a foot unit measure that could even work for fractions (kind of doubt it does but I didn’t look).
Dave, your dave method seems like a good way to do it if you need the dimensions to be right as opposed to just read right (like 3d printing, though I’m guessing someone has some scaling software for that, not really as into that as I’d like to be. Maybe next ), but I know that I’d get hung up with the fact that I use the origin and the axis to keep track of things and line things up while drawing so that would annoy me a little.
I’m also guessing that the bigger version can be hidden from export for creating something like a toolpath or 3D printer file?
