I’m having trouble figuring out how to create a circle in my table top. Basically, I thought I could draw a circle on the top and then use push/pull to push it all the way to the opposite face (3/4" in my case). But, it isn’t this simple.
Can someone please point me in the right direction on this? I already have the top sketched but if there is a different technique that achieves the same goal then I am open to learning it. Thanks for any help.
Jason
bge table.skp (509.6 KB)You can’t push-pull a face on a component that isn’t open for editing, only a face or part of a face itself. That’s why you can’t just push-pull the circle you’ve drawn through the table top and nested planks.
You haven’t completed your profile, so I don’t know if you have Pro or Make.
With Pro:
Open the the table top component for editing (double click on it, so the planks are showing as individual components). Make a cylinder the size of the hole you want, which is at least as thick as the table-top planks you want to cut. Make it a component, and copy it to the clipboard (you’ll need it again).
Select Solid Tools, Subtract. Click on the cylinder for solid (1), then click on one of the planks for solid(2). That will cut the cylindrical hole out of that plank. It also deletes the cylinder, so…
Paste the cylinder back in place, in the context of the table top component.
Repeat for each plank in turn. (I made a mistake on the first one, and deleted it by accident).
Here’s an animation:
PS. Have looked again at this. Instead of using Solid Tools/Subtract, use the Solid Tools/Trim command instead. That leaves the cylinder in place and selected, so you just need to click on each plank in turn to remove the circular hole. MUCH quicker, and less error prone.
Use Intersect in Make + PushPull…
There are really only 3 unique components forming the table top boards.
However, 2 of the 5 are ‘mirrored’ [scaled -1 along green-axis]
Move the ‘top’ boards up 10, so they’re above the rest.
Thus avoids intersecting with unexpected things…
Now in the model-context draw the circle over the table top, centered on the middle board on its top face.
Edit board 1, select all, context-menu intersect with model - the circle cuts the top face - now PushPull the unwanted segment to cut it from the board, exit the edit.
Repeat with boards 2 and 3.
If boards 5 and 6 are simply copies of boards 1 and 2, then the cutout might be inverted… scale these -1 along the green-axis to ‘flip’ them…
Finally move the top boards down 10 so they are back where you want…
I do not yet have the Pro version. I’m just using Sketchup Make.
I do understand the part about the component being open for editing - I just left out a few of my previous tribulations in my description. Anyway, thanks a bunch for the explanation but unfortunately I haven’t yet made the jump to the Pro version so I will probably try one of the next suggestions. Thanks again.
I don’t understand what you mean by 3 unique components forming the top boards and how 2 are mirrored/scaled. The “top” is a component (not unique, as the middle shelf is currently a copy of it). So are you saying to move the “top” component up 10? And when you refer to “model-context”, is that what I get into by double clicking on the “top” component, e.g.?
So, to “edit board 1”, if I double click on board 1, e.g., and choose select all, then I get all of the geometry in the top component as well as all of the geometry in the middle shelf (since they are not unique). Next when I push/pull it affects the entire face of all of the boards in both shelves. I am still missing something here. Thanks.
Thank you for the animation! I will give this a shot. It certainly looks much simpler than all the methods I’ve tries thus far with the geometry already in 3D. I knew there were techniques like this but I’m not yet savvy with the eraser… Thanks again. By the way, is that a plugin you have used in order to create the animated gif?
Check your private messages.
To make the animated GIF I used the free program ‘licecap’, for Mac. It isn’t specific to Sketchup, and isn’t a plugin for it, but an independent program. It is essentially a screen recorder.
It can be done directly in SU Make starting with your existing 3D model, and working in 3D all the way.
Here’s the process I followed.
First, make each plank unique (though instead you could delete the nearest two, then when done, mirror the first two to replace them, with the hole cut out.) However, to deal with the case where the hole isn’t central, do it one plank at a time.)
Decide how smooth you want the hole to look and therefore how many segments to use when drawing the circle for the hole. Draw a circle of the desired size, push pull it to the thickness of the table top to create a cylinder, make it a component, and Edit/Cut it to the clipboard.
Open the first plank for editing (double click on the top, then double click on the first plank).
Paste the hole component in place.
Right click on the hole component, then select Intersect with Context.
Cut or delete the hole component (Edit/Cut, or Ctrl-X on Windows, Cmd-X on Mac).
This will leave a hole-shaped face visible on the top of the first plank. Push-pull it to the bottom of the plank, to make the hole.
Close that plank for editing (press escape), and open the next one for editing by double clicking it.
Repeat for each plank in turn.
Here’s an animation of cutting the first three planks.
Delete the hole if you won’t need it again, and Purge unused components.
Once you have learnt how to do it manually you can move on to plugins to speed up your work.
However It’s best not to jump to plugins until you understand the actual job the plugin is automating.
Here is how it can be done using Fredo’s VisuHole.
The trim function of solid tools is perfect way of doing this.
But as @john_mcclenahan said, only if you are using Pro version.
