Rounded edges conundrum

Ok Sketchup community, I need your help.

After 15+ years of using Sketchup for hobby projects, I’ve run into a problem that I can’t find a solution to.

As the image shows, to “round” the edges of an extruded ring, it’s pretty easy to draw a arc and then use the “follow me” tool. If it was straight edges I would probably have used the Frendo6 RoundCorner plugin. But when the shape is like the object to the right…? The thickness if the “ring” isn’t constant so the follow me tool won’t work. And even if it was constant, the result becomes a mess for some reason.

Can someone help me?!

Ive found the Bevel plugin can do things round corner has trouble with. Im not clear about the profile of the middle ring.

Smoothing a nonsemetrical curve.skp (82.8 KB)


Retraced the image, used offset tool, stitched, push/pulled, offset top, outer curve to middle of top, move copied the centered curve up 1/2 inch, drew an arc, and then used
follow me.
Edit: One tip be sure to weld the edges of the curves before offsetting or extruding.

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See this SU file for ideas.

Curved wall with rounded top.skp (318.2 KB)

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Brilliant, thank you all so much!!

Your examples look so good, but when I try the follow-me tool it looks terrible and doesn’t really do what it advertises. Se image and the .skp file for reference.


Curved wall with rounded top test.skp (251.3 KB)

What version of SketchUp are you actually using? Your profile says you have Free Plan of SketchUp 2018. There was no free plan of 2018.

I can’t look at your model at the moment but how large is it?

ETA: I opened your file. It’s quite small and the path is not flat.

Working at a larger scale, say 1000x would yield better results.

By bad, used the free plan for many years but got the perpetual pro 2018 license in the end and have stuck with it. Since I’m only designing for fun I can’t really justify the monthly fee and the 2018 version fills my needs :slight_smile:

The file is 251kb and the dimensions for each object is around 30 x 50mm.

Please correct your forum profile.

See my edit, above. Do you mean for the path to be planar?

Does it need to be planar for the follow-me to work?

Not necessarily but it’s likely you will end up with weird artifacts when the geometry is small and the path is not planar.

Makes sense. I’ll try again with a planar path.
I can of course alter the dimensions to make it “bigger”, but isn’t the dimensions just metadata? Since I can change the dimensions back again after I’m done :slight_smile:

SketchUp has a minimum for edge lengths. Below that it will consider the end points coincidental and delete one of them which leaves holes in the surface. SketchUp won’t create those tiny edge segments and thus tiny faces but they can exist if you scale down after creating them.

What is your goal for the model you are making? How will it be used? If it’s only for 2D graphics, you can hide bad geometry and not worry about it. (I wouldn’t do that but you could.) If you are modeling for 3D printing, just model everything in meters (1meter in the model equals 1 millimeter in the 3D print) and leave the model at that size. No need to scale down. Export the .stl with units set to meters and import it as millimeters in the slicer.

Smart move, haven’t thought about that. It’s for 3D printing. Duct intakes for model aircraft needs to be rounded for airflow to work properly (which I’ve learned the hard way…).

Once again, thank you for all your awesome help! I’m deeply impressed by the dedicated users on this forum. :pray:

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FWIW, here’s an example. This is a guide for a locking bar on one of the windows in our house. In SketchUp the model looks like this.
Window Locking Bar Guide

3D printed and installed.
Window Locking Bar Guide

Notice that the position of the face to be used for the Follow Me operation has an importance as well as its starting point.

In your example, you place the face on a curve and it doesn’t seem aligned correctly. Try placing it on the straight edge and oriented to be perpendicular to this edge.

Click in sequence on the scenes tabs of this SU file for ideas.

Position of face for Follow Me.skp (493.1 KB)

Made the path planar and bumped it up to meters instead of mm - worked like a charm!

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