I am working on assembling a drawing for a project. I need to save my views as vector for exporting to a PDF. The drawing I am currently experiencing difficulty with is a section of a sink.
When rendered as raster, everything looks as expected. But when I render it as vector or hybrid, a horizontal line appears that has no presence in my SketchUp model.
Additionally, the back face of the sink is broken up into segments, rather than the lines staying hidden, as I have it in my model.
Any ideas?
Can you share the LO file so we can see exactly what’s going on?
What version of SketchUp and LayOut are you using? Please complete your profile with that info along with the graphics card/adapter. Your computer must have one.
Hey Dave,
Thanks for the reply. My system info is below. Tried attaching, but the file is too big.
Windows 10
SketchUp Pro 2018
AMD Radeon RX 560
Upload the file to Drop Box and share the link.
Thanks for updating your profile.
I see what the problem is. There’s some bad geometry in your model and it is being displayed. Since those edges are softened, they shouldn’t be displayed but it’s never a good idea to leave bad geometry anyway. Let me see if I can fix it. Back ASAP.
Thanks, Dave!
How’s this look?
I cleaned up the visible part of it. In the interested of time, I didn’t fix the back outside of the sink that faces the wall. It was a worse mess than the inside. There’s a lot more that could be done to clean up the model which would lighten it up and make it easier to work with but this should get you moving forward for the moment.
Out of curiosity, did you model this sink or did you get it from the Warehouse?
I’m thinking your LayOut template could use some improvement. 
Some Hybrid/Vector rendering edge display issues have been fixed in LayOut v.2019 but I saw your issues when opening the file in the new version.
Yes. I was working in LO2019, too.
Thanks, Dave!
What steps did you take to clean it up? I modeled it, but I’ll be honest, I had some difficulty with the workflow on this one. I’m sure I could have done it much more efficiently/cleaner than I did.
-Chris
I deleted all of the hidden edges along the back and on countertop surface and the top edge across the sink basins. then I redrew the straight edges where the back of the sink basin meets the counter top and that filled in the surfaces. As I said, I erased the bad geometry on the back outside and some unneeded coplanar edges.
What information do you have to start with when you model a sink like this? That one doesn’t look especially difficult to model with the right work flow but with the wrong work flow things can go pear-shaped in a hurry. That’s OK if you want a pear shaped sink but this ain’t one.
Haha. I’m sure I could find a customer for a pear-sink.
For this one, I needed a more-or-less natural curve. I used the bezier curve tool plugin to generate the curves. I connected the ends of the curve to make a face to extrude, and pushed that to the full width of the bowl. I made a block for the drain at the bottom and used that with solid tools to create the strip drain.
I did the same with a shape at the front and back to create the draft on those faces for mold removal.
Next, I added this resulting shape to the vanity top and deleted the top face of the sink solid to form a hollow.
I then used Fredo’s Joint Push/Pull tool to extrude the entire piece to a thickness of 3/4".
I think I had a series of accumulated errors along the way that just held me up. I arrived at something which was ‘satisfactory enough,’ but wasn’t totally thrilled with it.
I would be interested in hearing how you might approach it.
-Chris
I think that’s a good assessment.
As for my approach, I would maybe do it something like the following:
First, I would draw a 3D blank to start. The problem many folks have is they start thinking only in 2D and they wind up creating trouble when they go 3D. So here I’ve made the blank match the thickness of the back wall of the basins. Then I drew the curve profile for the inside of the basin. I drew the Bezier curve on the far left with Fredo6’s Bezier Spline tool and added straight edge segments for the depth of the trough and half it’s width. That gives half the single basin profile. The curve and the straight lines were copy/rotated about the basin’s center line to make the opposite half. I used Offset to create the bottom profile of the basin. Then I copied the inner and outer profiles over to the right and finished completing the profile of the sink basins and counter top with some additional straight edges made with the Line tool.
Push/Pull gets rid of the waste at the bottom…
Around to the back, a straight line defins the thickness of the countertop.
Push/Pull pulls that out to make the counter top surface behind the sink. Underneat there’ll be a few coplanar edges to delete. Do them next to keep your model clean.
Then select all of the geometry and use Move/Copy to make a copy the back half of the sink out in front of the original. While the copy is still selected, right click on it and choose Flip Along>Green Direction to mirror the geometry creating the front half of the sink. Move the copy into place with the back half and erase the seam lines. After you’ve placed the copied and flipped geometry in place, you can go to an end view or the top view, drag a selection box around the seam lines and hit Delete. If you moved it correctly, you should still have all of the faces. Pull out the front edge of the counter top to make the top face the right width and add the front face by drawing a line across the underside and then using Push/Pull to pull it down.
At this point I made the sink a component and checked to make sure Entity Info reported it as solid. If you get to this point and it isn’t solid, take a few minutes to clean up. Thom Thom’s Solid Inspector can be a huge help here.
I noticed in your model you added the slopes in the troughs so water would run to the drain. This detail is probably not critical to show unless this is going to be used for manufacturing the wink. If you need to add the slopes, draw lines across the trough where the drain holes go and move them down as needed. Move the edge at the front of the trough up to create the slope down to the back.
To cut the holes for the drains, I created a cylinder component making sure it is also solid. then I used Eneroth Subtract from Eneroth Solid Tools to make the openings.
When you get all finished, you should have a sink component and it should still be a solid. In my short time of using SketchUp, I’ve found that solid components are always the cleanest and easiest to work with and I shoot for making every component show as solid in Entity Info.
And for what it’s worth, even after erasing a bunch of geometry in your sink, you can see the entity count is pretty high compared to mine…
Thank you for the VERY thorough write-up!
The internet occasionally gives me hope for humanity
Happy to do it. I hope it gives you some ideas.
