I have 60 copies of identical objects, all lined up on the same axis. I need to shrink them towards one end so that they form a cone. How do I do this? They’re all in the same group so if I use the scale tool to scale the object down, the group itself shrinks. Is there some extension I can use to shrink them all towards one end? The outcome being that every identical object is smaller than the one before it.
Check out the extension FredoScale. Other
wise you would need to group and scale each disk individually.
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Your profile says you are using SketchUp for Schools. That version doesn’t have any facility for extension like FredoScale. If your profile is correct you’ll need to find a different way to do that. You could create the rings with thickness as profiles and then use Follow Me to make the rings.
Your profile also indicates there’s no operating system or graphics card which would make it impossible to use SketchUp.
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Note: The result will be different with Fredoscale, it will taper the rings whereas Dave’s offering will keep the shape of the individual rings. As with all things sketchup there are many ways to do things and often without knowing the desired result options can vary greatly.
Another extension option would be Grow by Tig.
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Dave’s method (no, not that Dave method…) would have the individual rings be tapered, which may not be the desired outcome. TIG’s thing should do non-tapered scaled down sequences.
There ought to be a way in SketchUp to double-click to do the last two actions. Like, you can double-click to repeat a push pull, or an arc at a corner, or an offset. But, no way to do a move/copy then scale, and repeat that. In a sense it’s like a double-click should run a macro.
I will bring up that idea in our next tools meeting.
No they wouldn’t, that’s kinda the point of it, it is an array of rectangles that will follow the follow me and stay as placed.
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Out of interest Dave, could you have deleted the rectangular face and run follow me on the staggered small rectangles array to achieve the same result? I’m away from my computer at the moment or I would have tried it!
Well, yes, you could do that but there would first need to be faces in the rectangles. I had created them as holes in the rectangle. And you would have to do them one at a time. You couldn’t run Follow Me for the small rectangles in on go like I did.
Thanks for the replies! Ah, I didn’t know that I can’t use extensions in sketchup for schools. You’ve mentioned a lot of extensions and they all sound interresting. I’d like to try them out. Is it possible to download a file from Sketchup for Schools and upload it and edit in in the normal Sketchup so that I can use those extensions? For now, I’ll try Dave’s method - thanks for this Sketchup for Schools alternative!
Yes, you can go back and forth unless you’re using an older version of SketchUp desktop like 2017 Make. You still can in that case, but you have to save back to the older version for it to read it, while the web version (SU for Schools) should be able to open older files.