Push Pull through complex geometry

[PilotScott]

Hello everyone,

While I’ve been a SketchUp user for many years, most of my experience has been on the architectural side—creating construction documents in LayOut, with relatively simple geometry and uncomplicated components in SketchUp.

Recently, thanks to a growing 3D-printing addiction, I’ve started modeling entire buildings and intricate architectural elements for one of my clients. It’s been a fun challenge, but I’ve finally run into a problem I can’t seem to solve.

The model shown below is a Romanesque baptismal font. I’ve worked out most of the geometry, but I’m stuck on the base.

My thought process was to model the base as a complete solid first (including the concave and convex curves), then simply remove the portions that aren’t needed. Similar to drilling a hole through a cylinder—you wouldn’t typically model the hole as you build the cylinder; you’d create the cylinder and then Push/Pull the hole through it.

That’s exactly what I did. I modeled the base as a complete cylindrical form, laid out the profiles of the material to remove, and used Push/Pull to cut completely through the solid. It worked…mostly.

The flat portions cut correctly, but the more complex concave and convex surfaces remain behind, leaving internal geometry that should have been removed.

I’ve spent several hours researching this and have tried the suggestions I found in other threads, including:

• Native Push/Pull
• Fredo6’s Joint Push Pull
• Weld Edges
• Intersect Faces
• Creating groups/components before cutting
• Various Solid Tools workflows

Unfortunately, none of these methods remove the leftover curved geometry.

My questions are:

1. Is there a better modeling workflow for creating this type of shape?
2. Is there a reliable way to completely remove the internal curved geometry after making the cut?
3. Is this simply a limitation of Push/Pull with compound curved surfaces?

Any advice or recommendations would be greatly appreciated. I’m sure I’m overlooking something, but I’ve reached the point where fresh eyes would really help.

SketchUp 2026 26.2.243 - Mac OS 40-core GPU

Model

Base

Base Shape

Base Shape Transferred

Push Pull Section

Push Pull Condition

[Box]

After the pushpull, select the geometry and right click, then choose Intersect Faces with Selection.
This will create the geometry needed to allow you to select and delete the parts you don’t want.

Edit:
You also want to brush up on welding edges and soften/smooth. Looks like you have used follow me on an ‘exploded’ profile. Hence all the hard edges running around your base. If you welded the edges before the follow me you would have softened invisible edges, much easier to delete whole sections.

[DaveR]

@PilotScott

1. Is there a better modeling workflow for creating this type of shape?

Not sure it’s better but an alternative would be to make cutter shapes to remove what you don’t want. It is often faster and results in less or no cleanup. This requires that you make solid groups or components of the parts of the model as well as the “cutters”.

In the case of your model I would make the base, column, and the bowl on top as three separate objects (components or groups) making sure each one is identified as solid. The three legs would be instances of a single solid component. If you make all of the objects solids you can use the bowl and base to trim the ends of the leg.

I would suggest modeling centered on the origin as that gives you a fixed center reference when you lose the center inference from any circles in your model.

[PilotScott]

Box, Dave, you guys are frickin’ amazing!!!. Box, I do see how your technique would work, but I was having some issues with stray bits staying connected. Dave, there was a tiny amount of clean up, but that worked like a charm. As far as the rest of your comments, I agree. You could fill a book with what I don’t know about Sketchup, but these little lessons get logged in the ol’ memory database for later. Again, huge Thank You!!

[Box]

Thought I would just add this to show more of what I meant about ‘exploded curves’ and ‘welded edges’.
You can see here how exploding the curves on the profile create the hard lines on the follow me, but also you can see that although the lines are soft on the first one the follow me action has left them exploded, making cleanup a bit more fiddly. This is where it can be useful to weld after follow me to help with cleanup.