I was trying to sketch some angled legs for a bee hive bench 2 ft tall. The compound angle was 15 degrees (north-east for example) I thought it would be simple enough, but it was a bit of a pain. I couldn’t just locate a point 2 ft above the bottom of the leg skewed in 15 degrees both ways with a protractor and pull it up,
Why does it always have to only pull perpendicularly? Granted, perhaps the follow me tool would have been a better choice than what I did, namely, making a collection of guide lines, then drawing them in with the line tool. I would think there would be an option for this.
Try modeling the leg on axes. (vertically)
Then rotate it 15° about the appropriate axis.
Intersect two temporary horizontal cutting planes to cut it to length.
Make it a Component, then Move/Copy and Flip to make the set of four legs.
Or more simply, draw it on axis. Then make it a component, open it for editing, then select the top face and move it sideways. That will keep the top and bottom parallel, as you probably want.
You can move the top face in the X, Y, or both directions, depending on how you want the result to look.
You can either measure the movement you want, or draw a guide at 15° using the protractor tool to get the angle exact.
This won’t keep the width of the leg exactly the same, measured straight across, though.
Alternatively, draw the leg over-length, then draw a horizontal line at the right height and use the pushpull tool to slice off the end.
humm. See, my thinking is: why not have a hot key you can invoke then type in the angle or adding a comma, the second angle? ( X 15, y 13) Then push pull the object.
What I am trying to emulate is the action of a chop saw doing a compound miter. So to keep the object’s internal dimensions unchanged, so for this to work SU would have to enlarge / skew the the shape according to the angle(s) chosen - so I guess an additional hot key or popup would be need to invoke this option.or not.
That is also a pet peeve with using the rectangle tool. I would try and draw a sloped roof and I was stymed by the tools unwillingless to do what I want. The rotated rectangle option may be the solution, but I haven’t played with it to see if it does skewed rectangles
I appreciate the work-arounds you have posted, however, I hope the masters of the realm on all things Sketchup consider this tweak. That and a 3 tier sales program - free, paid but lacking layout ( while opening auto cad drawings), and the full on pro version.
That’s precisely what the cutting plane method replicates.
If it helps you to think in real world miter box terms, then model the leg on axes, horizontally.
Then rotate the cutting plane (blade) to achieve the desired miter and bevel.
