Yes. You are 100% correct about fabbing the planter with all the triangular planes. Not what I’m after with this design😊. I’ll try to do what you showed with the larger box and cutting away…how do I know when the planes are aligned when I’m moving from
a corner point? Thanks for your design video. If I can figure out how to line things up and then erase the cross lines and keep the face in plane I’d love it
I started moving the corner in the green direction and held Shift to lock the direction. Then I moved the cursor onto the other triangle to set the alignment.
The only good way to know that you’ve got the alignment is either a face will form without triangulation or you can deleted the edge between the triangles.
Thank you Dave. I followed your video example and was able to rebuild a flat face. Thank you so much
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Very good.
Assuming the faces have thickness (which may or may not be important in your case, you would want to correct the face orientation so only white faces are out.
What is your intent for the model after you have it created?
Thanks. Well, I first tried to design it by creating a little thickness on the base then extruding the top surface and then offsetting it and push pull the middle out but I when I did that I couldn’t figure out how to resize it with walls that I couldn’t just
grab 1 endpoint. So then I built it solid and just deleted the top plane when i was finished. So, now there isn’t any thickness on the planes and I want them to be 3/8” or 1/2”. My intention is to fabricate this / these designs from aluminum pate using the
plasma cutter table we use and then welding the planes together
So next I’ll want to figure out how I can explode the sections for plasma cutting and more importantly figure out the angles of join!!!
So probably all you really care about is the outside faces since they will be the largest ones. Maybe there’s no real need for them to have thickness.
Almost All my work is custom design from commissions. Either planters, furniture of interior laser cut metal panels…also metal and glass sculpture.
I’m looking forward to eventually learning some of the extensions that will help me design organic shapes…
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Good deal. Well, it’ll come along with practice.
That’s right. Other than to determine actual cut dimensions for the metal planes so they fit together well. I want to be able to get the plasma cutter as accurate measurements as possible to make fabrication efficient and clean. Some of the tables we’ve done
so far using sketchup files that are then “transferred” to the plasma cutter have not had truly accurate measurements and if caused wasted time and some unnecessary build challenges
Thanks Dave. I really appreciate your help.
This should be possible. Once you have the shape worked out, you should be able to get the shapes of the individual pieces easily enough. Maybe export to DXF or DWG to use for toolpaths.
It should be possible to get accurate dimensions. Make sure you are using units and precision that is appropriate to the requirements. My suggestion is to set Precision higher (finer) than you need in the shop. This will make it easier to identify issues if there are any. If you have Length Snapping enabled, you may want to turn that off. It can just get in the way and create problems for you.
Glad I could help.
d
Thanks Dave! 
When/if you want to give your planters thickness, you might find the Fredo6 JointPushPull plugin helpful. Get it it from the SketchUcation plugin store, and remember to install LibFredo as well. It’s required for almost all of Fredo’s plugins.
You need to sign up for a free account. There’s a subscription option too, but you won’t need that initially at least.
Thank you John. I appreciate this suggestion. I’ll get that extension and library.
Hi Dave,
First I hope you and your loved ones are all safe and healthy. Second, i’m sorry to write again on this same topic (problem) but i’m having a tough time designing these polygon 3d planters without breaking tons of faces and then when I fix one face I create more faces as a result. I’m sure these are rookie issues and i’m definitely making progress but man for a task that seems so simple…create a 5 sides planter with angles walls, its anything but simple. Ive gotten decent at creating the cutting solid and using the solid tools but the issue is getting the planter shape ready for that. If you have any other suggestions i’m all ears. Thanks Dave. Scott
Hi Scott,
Thank you. I hope the same for you and yours.
The key is to maintain planarity of the edges for each face. This is more of a laws of geometry thing than a SketchUp thing. What if you start with a sort of five sided pyramid. You can move the points at the base as well as the peak to adjust the shape without breaking the faces. The triangles must always be planar by definition. Then cut through the shape with a plane at the desired angle. I didn’t take the time to give the walls thickness here but you could.
I mentioned it before but since what you really need for cutting is the outside faces and your customers probably don’t care about the the inside faces, I would be tempted to skip the part about giving the faces thickness. Maybe something like this would suffice.
After Intersect with Faces, I left the face on the top and used Offset on it. then I pushed the inner face down a wee bit and then added materials.
Hi Dave,
What a great idea the pyramid with triangular sides. I can’t wait to try it. Should I create a 5 sides base and then pull lines from vertex you’re to a single point above? That seems like a way to create the shape?
I’m excited to try intersect faces as I haven’t tried it yet.
My sons and the rest of my family, me included, are all healthy so far thank god.
Thank you again Dave.
Scott
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I drew a pentagon and then drew edges up to meet at a common point. The nice thing about doing this is you don’t necessarily have to worry about where that point is at the beginning. You can move it up and down and horizontally until you get a look you think would work. To help visualise the shapes of the sides you can draw a large rectangle, much bigger than the pentagon, and put it at the desired angle. As long as you don’t run Intersect Faces and none of the edges going up to the points intersect the outside edges, you can move the peak around at will until you like what you see.
Hope it stays that way for you.
TTFN
d