Noob here using 2026 Pro. I have a vertical face. I have a shallow arc that’s at 90 degrees on the face that starts high up on the right side and ends lower down on the left. I used the move tool in the middle of the arc, so the ends don’t move but the arc itself is now at say a 45 degree angle to the face.
I need to put a face on both sides of the arc that connects roughly from the middle of the top of the face to all the points on the arc, and same thing for the bottom where the points are coming from the middle of the bottom.
I couldn’t figure out a way to do it nicely so I manually drew connecting lines and made lots of triangles…which are quite visible and looks terrible. Is there a better way to do this using only native tools? Thanks in advance!
Is there a reason why you want to do it using only native tools? Probably a plugin could solve your issue, but it’s hard to know without seeing at least an image of the model.
Thats pretty much exactly it! Its actually the side(s) of an actual product although a little less severe. I can’t tell you how long it took me just to figure out how to get that arc the right shape! But where yours is clearly very neat, mine required a LOT more triangles and odd shapes to compensate for, I imagine, my ignorance at doing things the right way. Maybe I should try to redo mine but I had a ton of hidden geometry and imprecision that caused me a lot of grief. I’m spending days doing things that you folks could probably do in about half an hour!
Why don’t I want to use extensions or similar software…Mostly because my boss doesn’t really want a bunch of us downloading extensions, let alone paying for them! Plus at this point I just want to know how to do it. I thought there might be a way to do it with follow-me or push pull, but couldn’t quite get there. Maybe I’ll try again on a clean template and try to copy it over or save it. I’ll see if I can upload a picture of mine so you can see what I mean about mine! Thanks!
Looking at pictures is just guesswork. My guess here is you have hidden the edges not softened/smoothed them.
It also looks like you have profiles turned on and set very thick.
But I have to go out now.
For the best, most accurate advice here you need to attach the actual .skp file. Just drag and drop the file from your hard drive into an open response window to upload the actual file. This will allow others to open it and give you better targeted advice than can be guessed at with a still image.
Note the difference in the eraser icon when I do the top compared with the bottom. The top I have tapped shift and the bottom ctrl. So the top edges are hidden but retain the hardness of the edge, the bottom have been softened so the face becomes smoothed.
I’ll add my stone to the wall, in order for a stitching to look good, especially if it’s manual, try to stitch in the same direction.
top one is a good stitch. bottom one might result is uneven areas, maybe it’ll look flat at tome point of the curve, or very pointy.
Select it all - right click and choose “soften and smooth”
Go to the soften area in the tray and move the slider a degree or two until it looks better.
The colour differences I assume because the renderer is shading/lighting the faces and all of those faces are angled slightly differently - adjusting that slider will do some graphics tricks to have sketchup calculate the angle between each flat surface in a different way.
20degrees is the default in SketchUp normally and this usually gives good results, but as a rule you want to use as little as possible until your object is smooth / sharp in the correct places.
Wow! You just did something in less than a minute that I couldn’t figure out in a couple of days! I’ve tried to duplicate what you showed. I got as far as the divide (which I didn’t even know existed!). But when I select the protractor, I can’t get it to do what you did. It stays blue - I don’t seem to be able to get the black one if it matters. I can change axes with the arrows, but I assume I need the black protractor?
I imagine because of all of the little errors I made, it wouldn’t let me make nice, neat divisions, so I was playing around and found that I could get odd angles to make a face - so I finished it that way. I suppose I should have just started over…I think I just got frustrated because I know that what I’m taking days to do should be done in maybe an hour or two…
yes you are correct!! More ignorance on my part. I read about eraser-shift but didn’t know that I could do eraser-ctrl. Yikes! And they say SketchUp is the easy program to learn!??
ehhh, well, that’s how we learn. I can’t count how many times I’ve “lost” time doing something my way before realising there was an easier way. or a plugin.
it’s actually a vector of progress, like this very thread. you do stuff, realise it’s not a great way, and go look for better solutions.
Thanks! I should have said I tried them both. I guess I’m not clear on how Mihai got the blue protractor to become black/vertical and connected to the opposite side…I’ve been trying it for half an hour now and I’m clearly missing something!!
